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Executive realness: examining the identity construction of black gay male educators and its influence on authentic identity expression in the K-12 workplace
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Executive realness: examining the identity construction of black gay male educators and its influence on authentic identity expression in the K-12 workplace
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Content
Executive Realness: Examining the Identity Construction of Black Gay Male Educators
and Its Influence on Authentic Identity Expression in the K-12 Workplace
by
Eric Bernard Timothy Sanders
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
A dissertation submitted to the faculty
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Education
May 2022
© Copyright by Eric B.T. Sanders 2022
All Rights Reserved
The Committee for Eric B.T. Sanders certifies the approval of this Dissertation
Alan G. Green
Shaun R. Harper
Julie M. Slayton, Committee Chair
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
2022
iv
Abstract
To understand how their identity as black gay men and the experiences thereof inform their
choices to authentically express themselves in their K-12 contexts, this study addressed the
following research question: How do black gay male educators construct their identities in their
K-12 contexts, and how do they express themselves authentically in their respective workplaces?
The data in this study were captured through interviews with 10 black, gay, male public school
educators. The findings revealed that a host of expectations are thrust upon them from history as
black people in the United States of America. Moreover, cultural and religious expectations of
sameness, and continuity of heteropatriarchal family systems enforce rigid expectations of black
masculinity that caused tension with who they were becoming as black gay men. Upon
recognition of similar heteronormative structures and beliefs that problematize their identities as
black gay men, they bifurcate their identity expressions in their K-12 contexts. to diminish the
impact knowledge of their gayness might have in their professional spaces. They shield their
gayness in their unique K-12 contexts in ways they did not outside of their professional
environments in response to expected discrimination or harassment or harm to career
advancement. This occurred despite comfort with their sexuality. Unless fostered by an organic
moment of need, disclosing their sexuality is not necessarily a priority given the perceptions of
hostility toward on black gay men, as well as symbolic tools to represent authentic identity
including sexuality on their behalf.
v
Dedication
This dissertation is dedicated to all seeds that grew without the light of the sun, and the star-
crossed androids charged with forbidden human love; to the little black boys who became men in
a world that was yet to be ready for them, and to those still navigating the crucible. May the love
in this labor bring you closer to living in the light as you deserve.
Mushrooms and roses is the place to be
Where all the lonely droids and lovers have their wildest dreams
The golden door of our emotions opens here
We’re all virgins to the joys of loving without fear
~Janelle Monaè
vi
Acknowledgements
It is difficult to justly convey the challenges endured during completion of a dissertation.
That difficulty is dramatically emphasized given a topic of such deep, personal connection that
required an unexpected amount of introspection that resulted in a personal evolution over the
course of 3 years’ worth of self-doubt, imposter syndrome, anxiety, and a whole pandemic.
Briefly, I acknowledge, that this dissertation was only possible through the diligence of the
village.
To my dissertation chair, Dr. Julie Slayton, it has truly been an honor working with you
throughout this journey. My gratitude for you is infinite. Thank you for always believing in me
when I did not, for telling me what I needed to hear even when it stung, for challenging me to
challenge my own perceptions to expand my thinking. Thank you for your vision, for being the
incredibly talented person you are, and for providing the space for me to be who I am
unapologetically in order to create something truly meaningful. Thank you for making me feel
seen. I will always smile looking back on our weekly Sunday conversations. I am forever
grateful that the universe set our paths to align.
To Dr. Alan G. Green and Dr. Shaun Harper, my dissertation committee: thank you both
for the encouragement, the feedback, and the wisdom you have provided during this process.
Your words, particularly during my defense, stayed with me throughout and served multiple
purposes beyond this dissertation, and for that I am grateful and humbled to have had you both
on my committee.
To Dr. Artineh Samkian, I send special thanks to you for helping to make this dissertation
possible as well, not just with your fantastic interview skills that assisted with this study, but for
vii
your kindness and empathy and grace shown during this experience that helped me to reflect
more deeply. I am humbled by your brilliance and thankful for your fellowship.
To my tribe: My family, my parents, my sisters, my best friend, my classmates, my
colleagues, and friends, I thank you all for lifting me up, motivating me, and pushing me when I
needed it most.
To my students who will inevitably read this: Thank you for giving me a reason to
persist. This is both for you and because of you.
To my partner Roland: For all the days you listened to my ramblings as I thought aloud,
for your unquestionable support through these last years of classes and late-night writing
sessions, for your shoulder when I was weary, for your laughter when I needed encouragement,
the simple words “thank you” are not adequate. I truly value having you in my life.
viii
Table of Contents
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv
Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... v
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ vi
List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. xi
List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... xii
Chapter One: Overview of the Study .............................................................................................. 1
Background of the Problem ................................................................................................ 2
Statement of the Problem .................................................................................................... 5
Purpose of the Study ........................................................................................................... 8
Significance of the Study .................................................................................................... 8
Organization of the Study ................................................................................................. 11
Chapter Two: Literature Review .................................................................................................. 12
Identity .............................................................................................................................. 12
Masculinity: History and Hegemony Disempowers Black Gayness .................... 13
Gayness and School Culture ............................................................................................. 38
The Black Supermen ............................................................................................. 39
Invisible Identities ................................................................................................. 45
Radical Honesty .................................................................................................... 48
Coming Out in the Classroom........................................................................................... 54
Conceptual Framework ..................................................................................................... 77
Identity .................................................................................................................. 78
School Culture ...................................................................................................... 82
Outness Continuum ............................................................................................... 85
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 87
ix
Chapter Three: Methods ............................................................................................................... 88
Research Design................................................................................................................ 88
Sample............................................................................................................................... 89
Participants ............................................................................................................ 90
Instrumentation & Data Collection ................................................................................. 100
Data Analysis .................................................................................................................. 101
Credibility & Trustworthiness ........................................................................................ 104
Limitations & Delimitations ........................................................................................... 108
Ethics............................................................................................................................... 109
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 110
Chapter Four: Findings ............................................................................................................... 111
Legacy Expectations of Black Masculinity .................................................................... 113
A Lot of It Comes from the Slavery Days ......................................................... 114
That Bible Life ................................................................................................... 115
Pride ................................................................................................................... 119
Toughen Up! .................................................................................................................. 122
Soft Heteronormative Oppression ....................................................................... 123
Harder Heteronormative Oppression .................................................................. 129
Self-Discovery & Isolation ............................................................................................. 135
Early Gay Discovery ........................................................................................... 136
Religious Conflict ............................................................................................... 143
I Found My Tribe! .............................................................................................. 147
Blooming in the Dark.......................................................................................... 150
Representation Matters ........................................................................... 157
Identity in the Professional K-12 Environment .............................................................. 161
x
Perceived Community Response to Gayness ...................................................... 163
Coming Out is Not Necessarily a Priority ...................................................................... 181
Coming Out is Organic ....................................................................................... 189
Revised Conceptual Framework ..................................................................................... 191
Chapter Five: Discussion, Implications & Recommendations ................................................... 210
Summary of Findings ...................................................................................................... 211
Implications and Recommendations ............................................................................... 213
Practice ................................................................................................................ 214
Policy .................................................................................................................. 224
Research .............................................................................................................. 226
References ................................................................................................................................... 231
Appendix A: Interview Protocol ................................................................................................. 236
xi
List of Tables
Table 1: Participants 91
xii
List of Figures
Figure 1: Conceptual Framework 78
Figure 2.1: Revised Conceptual Framework – Bow and Arrow ...………………………………194
Figure 2.2: Original Conceptual Framework – Outness Continuum Model………………….. .195
1
Chapter One: Overview of the Study
In my experience as a teacher, students never fail to notice anything new in their
environment. I have found them to be very observant and astute, and they do not hesitate in
informing the teacher of their feelings about it. I once changed my glasses in the middle of the
year and walked into the classroom with my eagle-eyed students noticing, “You got new
glasses!” It was something I always admired about my students and felt a tinge of pride about
how bright they were. Except one day when I walked in with a ring on my left hand. Without
skipping a beat, I was immediately interrogated, “Did you get married over the break?!” “Do you
have a wife now?” Never being one to share personal details, I politely declined each attempt at
revealing that I had recently gotten engaged. I had lunch with my mentor Erin soon after, and
two girls approached us, gleefully as if solving a mystery. “Mr. Sanders, are you engaged? We
heard that you were.” Immediately, I felt the sting of anxiety, dread, and panic. How did they
find out? Only two people knew. Feeling violated, I again politely declined to address the rumor,
and bade them goodbye. Erin, in an advising tone, asked me soon after, “How are you going to
handle that? Do you think you’ll have to come out eventually?” I looked at her and said honestly,
“I don’t know. I have no clue what that would be like. Being the only black male teacher here, I
am not sure I want to deal with an additional burden of being black and gay.”
The memory of this story was the impetus for this study. Most clear to me in that anxiety-
filled moment was that I could not reveal my truth. I was not willing to subject myself to more
scrutiny than I was already experiencing. In addition to being the only black male teacher, I was
also the youngest and the newest member of the faculty at a prominent school in an affluent area.
I was frequently met with dodged eye-contact by fellow teachers during morning greetings in
passing, assumptions of my being a substitute, and even misguided reprimands for not having
2
cleaned classrooms properly the previous night. The only place I felt welcomed was in my
classroom among my students. They made dealing with ubiquitous and often passive racism
worth its trouble. At school, it was difficult enough being the identity that was most easily seen. I
could not fathom adding to the hostility I faced daily by pronouncing my sexuality, as I was
barely accepted for being a younger black man. I was ill-equipped to understand the balance of
both of my identities in that space. From this sparked a curiosity of what others in my position,
being black and gay and a teacher, experienced. How did they navigate being black in
educational spaces, and how did that affect their choices to disclose their sexuality? How
different were their stories? What propagated the circumstances that made my experience
difficult, and were their stories like mine? What did successfully integrating a black gay identity
in the classroom look like? How could I increase understanding of this phenomenon for myself
and others through research to reduce the instances of marginalization and oppression that black
gay teachers may face to help them perform as teachers as authentically as possible? I undertook
this dissertation to respond to these questions.
In the remainder of this chapter, I present the background and statement of the problem,
the purpose and significance of the study and the organization of the rest of this dissertation.
Background of the Problem
The goal of this study is the achievement of anti-oppressive education. Kumashiro (2000)
defined oppression as “a situation or dynamic in which certain ways of being are privileged in
society while others are marginalized” (p. 25). Oppression in a school, in the context of identity,
stemmed from it being formed in a heterosexist environment, meaning that those in positions of
authority and/or those within the school system maintain strict ideals for what is deemed
appropriate (Kumashiro, 2000). Those positions of authority are both literal and figurative, such
3
as administrators and teachers to students, or those who more reinforce hegemonies through
culture and practice. For instance, how the heteronormative, cisgender binary of boys and girls is
upheld through practice in the K-12 environment by school officials through tools like dress
codes assigned by gender. Or how they and student peers reproduce dominant expectations of
those recognized as boys acting like typical boys according to socialized norms by adhering to
traditional roles in compliance of what is deemed normal. As such, gender norms and
expectations based on a cisgender, heterosexist structure reinforce a barrier against differences or
the “other,” here meaning queer.
1
The idea of the other, as Kumashiro explained, also extended
to be a term for those who are treated differently due to not fitting into the norm of a dominant
population. Kumashiro noted how frequently those who are othered are met with a range of
harmful actions on the part of fellow students and faculty including harassment, discrimination,
exclusion, and even violence. Kumashiro argued that this is not entirely about what the other is,
but what it is not; that a position of privilege is required to other an individual, citing
assimilationist ideology that reflects a belief system like people of “color should conform to the
mainstream culture and become more like middle-class white Americans … or to the sexist and
heterosexist assertion that all boys should exhibit hegemonic masculinity in order to be ‘real’
men” (2000, p. 27). His argument emphasized that there are power structures and hegemonies,
racial and ethnic prejudices, as well as sexist ideologies, that influence the ways in which schools
operate. If marginalization exists in these spaces for those who are othered, educators themselves
and their unique identities in the same spaces by extension also then marginalization and/or
oppression.
1
An alternative self-identifier and an all-encompassing term gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, etc. Use of the term
queer will refer to this definition.
4
What was elevated in Kumashiro’s work was his argument that not all forms of
oppression are known. In creating an anti-oppressive education system, paradigm shifts rooted in
action from a deeper knowledge base are required to expose those unseen systems of oppression.
In a multitude of ways, school cultures advertently or inadvertently perpetuate heterosexist and
cisgender othering that marginalizes a school’s denizens. Kumashiro suggested that this
oppression and marginalization are the manifestation of a lack of understanding of those who are
considered other. He further stated that what participants in a school culture do not understand or
desire to understand influences a resistance to and repression of what is uncontrollable and
unknowable for sake of sameness and repetition. Therefore, “education, then, needs to explore
the difference produced in the unknowable, such as the uncanny (i.e., the strangely familiar)”
(Kumashiro, 2000, p. 46).
By forwarding research aimed at ending oppression of the other in a school setting,
Kumashiro is one voice among several authors who are researching to contribute to a knowledge
base with hopes of mitigating the marginalization of gay teachers. However, inroads still need to
be made with the marginalization of black gay teachers specifically. Brockenbrough (2012)
argued that black queer teachers are critical in “disrupting black queer marginality in education
settings,” however, they are largely silenced due to numerous factors (p. 741). He attributed this
silencing to the policing of queerness in tandem with the production of masculinity of black male
teachers through the regulation of their “appearance, attire, gender performance, and personal
disclosures across contexts in order to monitor their queerness” (Brockenbrough, 2012, p. 758).
The resulting oppression, Brockenbrough suggested, is attributed to an understudied link
between racism, homophobia, and black masculinity. Woodson and Pabon (2016) explored this
marginalization and societal structures that uphold heteropatriarchal norms, including school
5
systems being centered in heteronormativity. Black gay men as agents of this system are
subjected to a series of expectations that seek to mold black men into a specific “good” type of
black man (Woodson & Pabon, 2016). The authors argued that this is in response to resolving a
demographic imperative of ending the school-to-prison pipeline for black youth with the logic of
presenting them with strong black role models through attracting to retraining black male
teachers who fit the desired mold (Woodson & Pabon, 2016). While the regulation of black
bodies is problematic, black gay teachers are oppressed through the regulation and
micromanaging of their displays of their identity. This is an unfortunate circumstance given that,
as heterosexual black male teachers are seen as aspirational figures for black youth, it is
arguable, as Brockenbrough (2012) said, that the same would be beneficial for black gay youth
and others they may come in contact with through their work. However, this is a possibility that
will be delayed as long as the marginalization of gay teachers, specifically black gay teachers,
continues. Contributing to the understanding of how schools and communities in which they
reside perpetuate the circumstances that subjugate black gay teachers both directly and indirectly
will help to deconstruct the pillars that uphold a framework of marginalization through
heteropatriarchal norms.
Statement of the Problem
As matter of educational pedagogy and practice, educator identity as William DeJean
(2008) argued, is an essential part of shaping literacy and practices that are brought into
curriculum. Identity and the experiences that constitute it inform pedagogical choices and
promotes meaningful learning opportunities that expands education from being about subject-
matter acquisition and socialization, to something more individualized and powerful (DeJean,
2008). Authenticity with respect to identity informed by culture, religion, sexuality, etc. directly
6
impacts the quality of teaching in a classroom, as it has the potential to strengthen connections to
learners in the classroom (DeJean, 2008). The realness conditions trust and engenders safe
spaces as it enables teachers to have “open and honest dialogue with their classes and individual
students,” which DeJean argued was critical for effective teaching. (2008, p. 63). Being “real and
honest, and caring…and someone who is able to move past fear to lower his or her protective
barriers” is when a teacher is authentic within the classroom (DeJean, 2008, p. 69). Quality
teaching combines content-knowledge with “pedagogical awareness and critical self-knowledge”
as teachers are generally remembered not for how much they taught but for their “personal
attributes, physical characteristics and teacher style (DeJean, 2008, p. 69). Essentially, the
identity of the teacher in the room and how they expressed themselves mattered in the classroom
and had practical implications on learning. DeJean’s argument implied that the extent to which
one is able to bring their authentic identity to the learning environment impacted learning
outcomes. It implied that teachers who were authentic more often would have better results,
“effective teaching” (2008, p, 63). However, it also implied that the opposite is possible, that less
authenticity aligned with less effective teaching. How would that affect educators with
marginalized and/or stigmatized identities? How would they be able to lean-in on their identify if
doing so brought tension in their environment, like the homosexuality among the homophobic, or
blackness in the presence of anti-black racists? Beatty and Kirby suggested that stigmatized
identities in hostile environments become invisible identities, as removing the stigma from
exposure reduces the risk of conflict (2006). In that argument, sexuality can be concealed to
avoid stigma in ways that race cannot, like Brockenbrough’s point on policing queerness (2012).
Gayness can be hidden, but blackness cannot necessarily. In representing blackness, do black gay
teachers who cannot identify publicly with gayness lose the potential of richer connections with
7
students who would identify with them? Given the marginalization that black gay men
experience because they are gay men, their capacity to be fully effective educators, by DeJean’s
(2008) definition, is artificially diminished due to stigma. If a teacher could be more authentic in
the classroom by unsheathing and drawing from previously hidden identities, their capacity to be
more effective in the classroom would also increase by that logic. From a perspective of practice,
the stigma of gayness and the resulting marginalization that black gay men experience as
educators diminishes their capacity to potentially be more effective educators if they were able to
be more authentic.
Research on black gay teachers and their experiences is quite limited (cf.,
Brockenbrough, 2012; Harbeck, 1992; Loiacano, 1989). Research that discusses how their black,
gay, and male identities interact in the classroom is also limited (cf., DeJean, 2008; Khayatt,
1999; Woodson & Pabon, 2016). Research that explores how their identities converge with
school cultures that are built upon heteropatriarchal norms, and how those interactions dictate
differing levels of expressions of their identity is, again, limited (cf., Woodson & Pabon 2016).
What is not present in the literature is how those black teachers grapple with heteropatriarchal
expectations in a school environment and arrive at a choice to come out or not given their
identities. In the body of literature that has been developing over the last few decades
surrounding the experiences of gay teachers, their lives in the classroom and greater school
environment, authors have contributed knowledge with hopes of mitigating the marginalization
of gay teachers. It features stories of hiding one’s sexuality to conform to their surrounding
culture and being rebuked after showing of pride in their identity (Bajali et al., 2012). Most have
called for continued study in this area as a means to fully understand the lived experiences of gay
teachers to make educational systems in the United States more accepting of sexual difference
8
through discourse–a lofty goal that has yet to be met. While understanding of gay teachers’ lives
have grown in result, the perspective of black gay teachers has mostly not been included.
Exploring the ways in which black gay male teachers navigate being black and gay in the
classroom and consider expressions of their gayness, I sought to highlight their stories to create a
greater understanding of the unique experiences of black gay male teachers to contribute to
actions, belief systems, and policy to reduce their marginalization.
Purpose of the Study
My research questions specifically asked: How do black gay male educators construct
their identities in their K-12 contexts, and how do they express themselves authentically in their
respective workplaces? I used a qualitative design to capture the unique perspectives of these
men. I sought to understand how their identities informed their choices to display their authentic
identities in their respective K-12 contexts. I additionally sought to understand their challenges
with fitting into their school culture, how race complicated their experiences as gay educators,
and how their experiences with their school cultures, in combination with their identity,
influenced their agency to come out. My goal was to reveal what factors empowered or inhibited
black gay educators’ expressions of authentic identity in their own rights, and how they may be
marginalized through a range of expectations placed upon them, including what it meant to be a
man, to be a black man, and a gay black man in the role of educator in a setting that systemically
prioritizes heteronormative ideals.
Significance of the Study
This research comes with the goal of diversifying perspectives of what black male
educators look like to increase the agency of those same educators to be their authentic selves. It
has the further potential of influencing policies that shape school culture, liberate black gay
9
educators who are struggling with suppressing who they are to get by, and adopt through practice
new understandings that deconstruct oppressive systems in the K-12 environment. By extension,
progress in this endeavor has strong implications for black gay youth. Increased visibility of
black gay adults can affect the number of positive gay role models for those who are struggling
with coming to terms with their identities. This study is quite salient as there is a contemporary
movement in media to increase black gay representation. A young person now can turn on the
television and see welcoming displays of black gayness to the tune of “The Category is: Live.
Work. Pose!” The 2019 show “Pose” prominently featured black LGBT individuals on-screen
being supported, being loved, and thriving in ways that show that gayness is worthy of
celebrating, and not hiding. The show is careful in detailing the modern history of being black
and gay, from being kicked out of religious households, to finding love, and finding support in
families of shared experiences and finding what it is like to be valued for the first time. Houses,
as they are known, are often small families of discarded youth, taken in by elders to teach them
what it means to grow up gay, and to give them the love they deserve. These houses often
competed in balls, which are gatherings that feature different kinds of competitions depending on
the categories set for the night. This developed as early as the 1970s with drag queen Crystal
Labeija being its formative mother of the House of Labeija, spawning several other houses
(Livingston et al., 1992). Pose character Elektra Abundance, whose last name mirrored that of
her house, is quoted as saying “That is our place, our community. The balls were created so that
we would have some place to matter…while there are many places for us to find adoration in the
outside world, in this life, yes, the balls are all that matter (Murphy & Falchuk, 2018). High
scores in a category meant strongly producing authenticity. In the balls, they could be the things
they could never be otherwise, like high fashion models or professional dancers or artists. With
10
categories like Executive Realness, contestants portray business executives with their clothing,
haircuts, swagger, and accessories to become them. All in all, a powerful metaphor for the black
gay men who modify or hide who they truly are to fit heteropatriarchal norms for the sake of
acceptance and progress. The rich history in these stories is empowering, and the youth of today
have easy access to it where in years past, it was unavailable in mass. Although it is for a general
audience, these are stories about black queer individuals, told by black queer individuals, and
that representation matters. Similarly, this study is being conducted by a black gay teacher, to
capture data from black gay teachers and the like, for the effect it may have on the lives of black
gay educators and those they touch by extension. That representation matters as well. Harbeck
(1992) is credited in developing the first book compiling research on homosexuality and
education. Her work both included and preceded significant studies that contributed to a body of
literature that highlighted issues applicable to queer theory in education, gay teachers and
administrators, gay students, and homosexuality as it converged with heterosexism, among other
topics. Several of the studies pulled from this body of literature focus on predominantly white
demographics and the perspectives of mostly white participants and include small mentions of
race and how it may complicate gayness and coming out, calling for future studies to relay. If not
the preceding case, studies on race and homosexuality in the education-sphere are mostly
conducted by white authors. It is my hope that this study will add a voice representative of black
gay men to a body of research that has not often heard them. For the struggling teenager, I hope
this study produces at least one viable mentor, liberated by the intended findings of this study–a
potential catalyst for change for them to be the role model they can be for their students.
11
Organization of the Dissertation
In this Chapter One, I have explained the central issue of this study, along with the
background and what this study aimed to achieve. In Chapter Two, I present the bodies of
literature that I have explored in pursuit of understanding the discourse of identity with respect to
the integration of a gay identity in the case of black men, and how gayness operates within
school cultures. In Chapter Three, I present the methodological approach used for this study, that
includes the rationale for selecting a qualitative study design, sampling procedure and rationale,
and a description of instrumentation used for data collection and analysis. Steps to maintain
credibility and trustworthiness, and to abide by ethical demands are all described within. Chapter
Four presents the findings for this study, including my revised conceptual framework that
developed after findings emerged during data analysis. Chapter Five will a summary of the
findings from the study, as well as discuss the implications and recommendations for policy,
practice, and future research.
12
Chapter Two: Literature Review
This study was born out of my experience as black gay teacher who felt compelled to not
disclose my sexuality in my workplace. From a curiosity of how other gay black teachers
navigated their choices in revealing their sexual identity and in observation of an area of research
that had not been frequently engaged, I sought to answer the following questions: How do black
gay male educators construct their identities in their K-12 contexts, and how do they express
themselves authentically in their respective workplaces? To answer these questions, I turned to
literature that first explored identity, including various aspects of gayness in relation to race,
community, and religion. Then I examined literature that focused on the role school culture plays
on black gay men’s experiences. I conclude the chapter by presenting my conceptual framework,
which served to inform my approach to conducting the study including choice of qualitative
methods, instrumentation and data collection, and analysis.
Identity
The first body of literature I examined addressed identity. I began by trying to understand
identity as it pertained to the nuances specific to black gay men, to understand how the
expectations of them as black men stood in conflict with their gayness. That led me to explore
the history pertaining to black masculinity to learn what those expectations were and how they
exerted unique pressures that problematized gayness. That revealed a legacy of heteropatriarchal
expectations of masculinity from black history that was upheld by racism and white supremacy,
religion, heteronormativity, and homophobia. From there, I explored expectations of identity and
performative representation, and how those experiences affected their view of their whole
identity. From there, I moved into the discourses surrounding the imperatives of disclosing one’s
hidden identities, specifically gayness, and the multitude of considerations that one may
13
contemplate when deciding to come out. With the literature illuminating differences among
cultures with respect to coming out, I then moved toward a discussion of integrating gayness into
one’s identity and how this process is more complex for black men than it is for men from other
races and cultures. Much of this complexity stemmed from a need to belong to one’s formative,
cultural, and relative groups of affiliation, ranging from family to greater community. In the case
of black men, being gay is noted as being at odds with a Christian-based black community.
Homophobia within the community fosters much personal conflict for black gay men. The
literature further explored the way this conflict built an internalized homophobia and defense
mechanisms aimed at protecting themselves from being exposed as black gay men, and the
perceived ramifications of that exposure.
Masculinity: History and Hegemony Disempowers Black Gayness
In exploring how coming out might be different for black men, it was important to
understand the racial and cultural expectations of black masculinity and sexuality that shed light
on unique pressures and signals that problematize gayness for black men. Through a historical
lens, it is evident that black masculinity is naturalized in history, its racial roots responsive to
white supremacy, and black aspirations of patriarchal masculinity are a vehicle to progress in a
white, dominant power structure amid a legacy of slavery and ensuing anti-black racist
oppression (hooks, 2004; Williams, 2010). In her chapter entitled Plantation Patriarchy, bell
hooks discussed the difficulty black men faced to be seen as legitimate men, and how black men
were prevented from being black men in their own image. Quoting hooks, the “image of black
masculinity that emerges from slave narratives is one of hardworking men who longed to assume
full patriarchal responsibility for families and kin,” and that “although the gendered politics of
slavery denied black men the freedom to act as “men” within the definition set by white norms,
this notion of manhood did become a standard used to measure black male progress (hooks,
14
2004, p. 3). This begun as early as the time of American chattel slavery, particularly in the
southern parts of the United States (hooks, 2004). As the identities and cultures of the enslaved
were stifled and suppressed to detach them their native roots to be more amenable to servitude,
Christianity was systematically impressed upon them as a means to both justify the institution of
slavery and the social hierarchy within it (hooks, 2004). As the timeline of American slavery
progressed, enslaved black people emerged as Christians, subservient to a dominant white power
structure thrust into a society that upheld the image of white, Christian, male patriarchal
masculinity as the standard. It meant to have a family, be a provider, have gainful income,
children, and most importantly, a wife (hooks, 2004). With respect to gainful employment to
sustain an income that supports a wife and family, Williams (2010) illuminated a history of
hiring practices enforced by racist structures the precluded black men from jobs that would make
them men. In the aftermath of slavery, black men were not allowed to hold the kind of jobs that
would be the provide the ends to those means due to suppressive and white supremist structures
like black codes particularly in the south regulated a blockade among racial lines (Williams,
2010). These were regulatory policies written with veiled language that specifically targeted
black people during the Reconstruction period after the Civil War to get around measures that
protected against discrimination like the Texas Black Codes in 1866, to diminish their
socioeconomic status and retain a cheap labor force in lieu of slavery itself (hooks, 2004;
Williams, 2010). Moreover,
the “racially neutral” style of labor regulations that intentionally hid the intended black
audience was an official veil that perpetuated African-American ‘disorientation, dire
economic circumstances, and frustration. (Williams, 2010, p. 1)
15
This stonewalled black men from employment that was not service based, while forcing black
women into their delegated niche as maids for white families to support their households, as it
was simultaneously made illegal in many locales for black women to be unemployed.
Ultimately, black women were made typical breadwinners in this circumstance, situating the
strength of their femininity in conflict with their assumptive place as subordinate to masculine
patriarchy, thereby problematic to sexist black men as they were seen as appropriating their
rightful place at the head of the proverbial dinner table (hooks, 2004). hooks (2004) wrote,
Black males seemed to see the necessity of black females participating as co-equals in the
struggle for racial uplift with the implicit understanding that once freedom was achieved,
they would take their rightful place subordinate to the superior will of men. In keeping
with sexist norms, sexist black folks believed that “slavery and racism” sought the
emasculation of Afro-American men’ and that the responsibility of black folks to counter
this, that black women were to “encourage and support the manhood of our men…Again,
it must be emphasized that that the black men who are most worried about castration and
emasculation are those who have completely absorbed white-supremacist patriarchal
definition of masculinity.” (pp. 9-10)
Racial uplift, as hooks argued, was contingent upon the elevation of black masculinity, a
heteronormative view of male saviorship of the black race, reliant on both the assistance and
subjugation of femininity (hooks, 2004). Black progress required black masculinity leading it,
not femininity. It was important to counter what was considered the emasculation of black men
and prop up black men as rightful men, as the mainstream would expect, particularly amid Jim
Crow segregation and the fight for integration (hooks, 2004; Williams, 2010). It was a
community “responsibility” to do so (hooks, 2004, p. 10). As the critical white gaze shone upon
16
the black family toward the 1950s, a pervasive narrative that black men disproportionately
abandoned their wives, contributing to a mainstream a belief of dysfunctional black families,
othering them (hooks, 2004; Williams, 2010). With legitimacy attached to conforming to a
white, heteronormative, and patriarchal image of a family, a shift occurred that made two-parent
households among black families the norm, challenging that characterization of dysfunction
(hook, 2004; Williams, 2010). This resulted in a drop in households headed by women to a
reported 17% percent (hooks, p. 11). Thus, the patriarchal-striving norm of black masculinity
entrenched as it was understood that building black men into men was essential for gaining
approval and access among racial socioeconomic gatekeeping (Williams, 2010). By being men,
they would helping the entire racial community advance as a matter of responsibility and duty,
and as hooks (2004) pointed out, there was a history of the community coalescing behind them to
contributing to those ends.
Marjorie J. Hill (2013) echoed bell hooks in suggesting that the hegemony of
heteropatriarchal gender expectations in the black community is connected to a legacy of slavery,
contributing to homophobia. Hill investigated the “prevailing assumption” of homophobia in the
community and examined several works on this topic to propose a rationale for why homophobia
maintained its presence there (2013). Moreover, Hill highlighted unique circumstances that black
gays and lesbians experienced that put them in an isolated position in the black community. She
explored the impacts of racism, sexism, religion, gay and lesbian identities through an
intersectional lens. Hill pointed out that among the black community were many differences and
was clear to state that there was no monolithic black community, so it was difficult, if not
impossible to codify the entirety of it, particularly so without a reliance on stereotypes (Hill,
2013). Additionally, Hill wrote, “Given the number of cultural variables, it ought to be patently
17
clear that there is no…homogeneous black lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT)
community” (Hill, 2013, p. 208). These variables were due to “geographic location,
acculturation, socioeconomic statues, education, religious background and age” (Hill, 2013, p.
208). What was a connecting thread among the segments of the black community, Hill posited,
were an ancestral heritage from Africa, the impact of slavery, and the weight of racism and
discrimination on past and contemporary generations (Hill, 2013)? Borne of these were the
values of kinship, collective unity, and the role of religion, with particular attention to slavery.
Hill argued that slavery had an indelible impact on the black community and cited DeGruy Leary
to say that adaptive survival behaviors of black communities were stemmed from posttraumatic
slave syndrome, where descendants of the institution were robbed of dignity, self-worth,
humanity, and homeland traditions (2013). As such, the racism that arose was a consequence of
that systemic injustice, serving as a barrier to impede the lives of black people and their progress
to power and socioeconomic status. The result of these was the treatment of black people as
inferior and the color of skin as a “badge of difference” iconic of a social caste system wrought
with “second-class standards and opportunities” (Hill, 2013, p. 209).
Gay men and lesbian women were caught in a precarious situation. Hill described them
as being caught between fear of cultural estrangement and racial/ethnic alienation in the gay and
lesbian community, thus forcing them into a quandary of identity preference. Hill (2013) said,
“They are all too often situated in the ‘rock’ between choosing one identity over the other, and
the ‘hard’ place of declaring an implied allegiance and rejection of a part of oneself” (p. 210).
Internalized homophobia also contributed to, as Hill described, an integration of negative
feelings towards oneself, suggesting in the case of some black homosexuals an outward rejection
of their sexuality in public (2013). Hill noted that this only contributed to “negative individual
18
psychic consequences” and ultimately contributed to and perpetuated homophobia among the
community (Hill, 2013, p. 210). To be black and queer, Hill suggested, was to experience a life
that was complicated by race, class, and gender bias; where inclusion was both a lofty goal and
constant struggle simultaneously as diversity was a reality (2013). The black gay community
often sat between black heterosexism and queer racism, that put them at odds with both, forcing
them into an invisible status as they were not often seen by either of their identities they
belonged to (Hill, 2013).
Regarding homophobia specifically, Hill used the following definition:
an irrational fear or hostility and/or hatred toward those who love and sexually desire a
person of the same gender … [including] negative feelings or attitudes toward non-
heterosexual behavior, identity, relationships, and community or those perceived to be in
any of the above. (Hill, 2013, p. 211)
That homophobia was expressed in a number of different ways, including verbal and physical
harassment, vandalism, theft, assault (sexual or physical), bullying, theft, among many others
(Hill, 2013). In other parts of the world, gay was punishable by death or imprisonment. As Hill
characterized it, homophobia was closely related to racism, as it was destructive and could be
institutionalized to harm and/or protect.
2
Regarding the black community specifically, Hill sourced several authors as saying,
through observations and study, that there was no room for black LGBT in the LGBT
community (2013). The US data from the National Black Survey in 2008, 72% of black men and
women reported homosexuality as being “always wrong,” compared to 52% of white men and
2
At the time of her writing, gay marriage was illegal in 43 states. It was not legalized federally in the United States
until 2016 through a Supreme Court decision in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges (576 U.S. __ (2015)).
19
women, and that number was on a downward trend (Hill, 2013). This result was similar for even
that of black men who had sex with men with 57% also saying homosexuality was “always
wrong” compared to 27% of white men, demonstrating an either an internalized homophobia or
conflict of personal interest of beliefs (Hill, 2013). Hill theorized this was reflective of a history
of oppression, a systemic racism and condescension to the point of inferiority, in addition to
internalized racism contributed to a rejection of not only gays, but also black gays as well (2013).
This suggested that homophobia was not exclusive heterosexuals as it also was formed among
homosexuals as well, particularly in the black community.
Further contributors to this homophobia were faith-based traditions and values, which
resulted in a stymied expression of support for black gays and lesbians. The black community in
a general sense had a strong connection to religion, particularly Christianity as it was linked to
those of the African diaspora and slaves being indoctrinated with the bible to suppress of native
cultural values, and to uphold and perpetuate the institution of slavery (Hill, 2013). Christianity
lent the black community a “strong spiritual, moral, political, and social force” that had been the
core of movements toward equality politically and socially (Hill, 2013, p. 212). However, that
religious foundation had placed many a black gay youth in precarious positions upon discovering
their same-sex feelings.
Bajali and her co-authors (2012) examined the role familial, religious, and community
influence played in the experiences of young, gay (men who had sex with men or MSM) black
men to identify strategies they used to “negotiate and manage their sexual minority status”
3
(Bajali et al., 2012, p. 730). Their study was conducted in Jackson, Mississippi, however, they
3
Bajali et al. focused on HIV-positive and negative individuals. The specific traits and demographic of HIV status
was beyond the scope of my dissertation. As such, I exclude data regarding the specific experiences exclusive to
those with HIV as represented by Bajali et al. unless it has direct implications for my study.
20
argued that the circumstances that engender the experiences therein were mirrored in various
black, Christian-normative communities across the nation. The study uncovered a protective
adaptation called “role-flexing,” internalized homophobia, and direct correlations to stigma
altering behavior (Bajali et al., 2012, p. 730).
This study sprang from an earlier investigation led by the Mississippi State Department
of Health (MSDH) in conjunction with the Center for Disease Control (CDC) after observing an
increased rate of HIV transmission via diagnoses among black MSM in the state. It yielded
interview data that indicated a theme of prevalent “deleterious effects” because of homophobia
in the general black community, and specifically in small, southern communities (Bajali et al.,
2012, p. 731). Many of the participants noted that homophobia was the impetus for feelings of
rejection, isolation, and depression, among others, and felt suppressed in expressing their sexual
identity and other behaviors due to cultural and religious forces in their environment (Bajali et
al., 2012). Bajali et al. analyzed that data and constructed an additional interview protocol with
the goal of exploring the specific role community, religious, and familial influences had on these
individuals, and produced a “more nuanced, contextually grounded understanding of a young
African American” MSM in Jackson, Mississippi, but also carried implications for those in other
areas in the country (2012, p. 731).
Bajali et al. used the same sample population from the previous study, HIV-positive and
negative black MSM aged 16-25, with a purposeful stratified sampling criterion based on HIV
statues (2012). They attempted to capture data from 20 participants but reached saturation at 16.
Of that number of participants, seven were HIV-positive, nine were HIV-negative, and the
median age was 22. Each participant was offered an incentive of $25.
21
Each participant was engaged in an in-depth qualitative interview with the following
topics:
(1) General characteristics of young black MSM in the Jackson area and the degree to
which they were open about their sexuality; (2) personal networks and community social
groups of MSM; (3) relationships and ways to meet other men; (4) individual and
community attitudes toward safe sex and HIV/AIDS; (5) community attitudes about
homosexuality and personal experiences of, or exposure to, discrimination; (6) access to
and utilization of health care; (7) their experience of, and response to being diagnosed
with HIV (for participants who were HIV infected); and (8) their recommendations for
improving HIV prevention. (Bajali et al., 2012)
All interviews were conducted in private at a local health clinic, or university library by a male
CDC scientist and were digitally recorded. Most of the questions from a nearly hour-long
interview were about the participants’ experiences being a young black MSM in their home area,
their thoughts about being open with their sexuality, what the community perceptions were of
MSM, and their personal experiences with discrimination (Bajali et al., 2012). The authors used
an inductive approach to analyze the data, which meant that the data would guide them to
patterns, themes, and conclusions. Once interviews were transcribed, the analysis produced
responses that were coded into four domains: “social forces in the young men’s lives; the general
community, gay community, religion and faith, and family” (Bajali et al., 2012, p. 732).
A majority of the participants reported that the larger community did not accept
homosexuality, but the African Americans particularly were not open to it. Faith, religious
teachings, and church leadership were cited as major contributors (Bajali et al., 2012). More
specifically, they pointed to “Negative stereotypes and misconceptions about gay men being,
22
‘‘flamboyant,’’ ‘‘permissive,’’ ‘‘careless,’’ ‘‘loud,’’ ‘‘messy,’’ and ‘‘having no manners’’ as
emerging as both drivers of, and responses to, broader discriminatory attitudes (Bajali et al.,
2012, p. 732). Being gay was characterized in a manner that described something that black men
could not be; it was a “white man’s disease” that was commensurate with the eventuality of
“catching” HIV (Bajali et al., 2012, p. 732). All reported that they had experienced, witnessed or
heard about some act of discrimination and prejudice. In a longer anecdote, a participant found it
strange that with the history of oppression that black people had faced for generations, that they
would behave in a similar discriminatory manner toward people in their own community.
Of particular note was that many of the men reported that they altered their behavior
and/or concealed their sexuality depending the context and circumstances of their present
environment. They characterized it as “adjusting to your surroundings” and “adapting to the
environment” or simply putting on a persona (Bajali et al., 2012, p. 732). The following
quotations from two participants add more context to this concept:
If I want to go out in public [with a male date], I’m not the type of person that’s gonna go
out and hold your hand or let me put my hand in your pocket. Let’s cuddle at the movies.
No, I’m still... I’m still... I’m socially conscious that no, this is not accepted here so I am
not going to show affection in public.
I hate goin’ to the mechanic people. I absolutely hate it. ‘Cause I have to put on this
whole manly persona. Like a straight man persona. And it’s just…it’s weird (Bajali et al.,
2012, p. 732)
In addition to transforming oneself or “role-flexing,” they also reporting being forced to
participate in homophobic behaviors and conversations to prevent suspicions from generating
about their own sexuality. Inversely, when around their peers and in gay-friendly environments
23
such as gay clubs or bars, or out of town with friends, comfort expressing their sexuality,
affection, and were less guarded about certain behaviors stereotypically identifiable of gay men
(Bajali et al., 2012).
Specifically, comfort and support were nestled in midst of the gay community. “Gay
families” arose as a critical support system even more so for those who were disowned by their
biological families or those with families who refuse to be involved in their lives (Bajali et al.,
2012). Those families “also known as ‘‘houses,’’ were a collective of people, frequently young
gay or transgender black and Latino persons, who functioned as a kinship system that was
organized to meet the needs of its members for social solidarity and mentoring. Many of these
houses participated in “balls” or social events that featured dance and other performance
competitions (Bajali et al., 2012, pp. 732-733). One participant explained,
[My family] don’t want to be a part of me. They don’t disown me, but they don’t know
anything about it. So it’s kind of good to have that [gay] mother and father there...in your
life. And you can go ahead and talk to [them].
Bajali et al. (2012) reported that the supportive gay community did not preclude members
of it from being simultaneously tolerant of and participating endorsers of the prejudices the
community faced in the larger community. The internalized homophobia, reportedly, was
wrought from being raised in the environment where expressions of homophobia was the norm.
The measure here was the degree of femininity one displayed, as if being too gay, which for
some was unsupportable even being gay themselves.
I don’t understand how some guys they’re walkin’ around and act feminist [sic]. ‘Cause
like whatever you do behind closed doors is fine but when you out in public you a man
first. (Bajali et al., 2012, p. 733)
24
Many of the respondents spoke to what Bajali et al. (2012) described as an incongruence
between being a black man and being effeminate, regardless of sexual behavior, resulting in
those with more feminine displays being subject to a greater degree of stigmatization compared
to those who were more masculine.
Religion and faith were of elevated importance to many of the respondents, which Bajali
et al. (2012) noted is reflective of the greater black community. One respondent remarked that he
found “comfort in God” after discovering his HIV-positive status (Bajali et al., 2012, p. 733).
Several reported they frequently attended church services, had a relationship with clergy, and
attended church activities, but still acknowledged what they believed was the church’s role as a
perpetual source of homophobia and discrimination of gay men, almost as if, as one respondent
said, they (homosexuals) were being targeted (Bajali et al., 2012). There were several instances
of respondents citing the use of bible verses to judge homosexuality a sin or an abomination, and
those who engaged were damned to hell. Each denounced the intolerance of their pastors and the
rhetoric that normalized homophobia in the church, which was viewed as both a source of
negative feelings towards homosexuality, and invalid given what respondents described as a
personal relationship with God.
I was taught all my life that gay people are automatically goin’ to hell and all that. So
how do they know that I’m goin’ to hell? ‘Cause they don’t know my relationship that I
have with God. Because he... he been still blessin’ me in so many ways since I’ve been
uh... [HIV-positive] I’ve still been blessed. I still have conversation with him. I still talk
to him. I still feel his presence. (Bajali et al., 2012, p. 734)
Some of the participants accepted and/or agreed with the messages the church was delivering
about the sinfulness of homosexuality. Bajali et al. (2012) noted that even if they did not agree
25
with the message, they still respected the alternate point of view. One respondent acknowledged
that his faith told him that his sexuality would mean his eternal damnation in hell, accepted the
truth of his situation, and persisted, nonetheless. From this, the authors suggested that this
represented an inner struggle between sexual behavior and religious framework that could result
in internalized stigma.
Discussing sexuality among family appeared to be an issue for the respondents. They
expressed a range of reactions from abandonment to support grown over time. Most commonly
was the families’ treatment of the knowledge of the respondents’ sexuality, in terms of coping
with the discordance between faith and what was deemed living in sin, was effectively described
as “don’t ask, don’t tell” (Bajali et al., 2012, p. 734). Essentially, dealing with the conflict was
managed by not dealing with it. Those who had not disclosed to their family did not do so,
reportedly, because of fear of familial rejection, stigma, and isolation, and the notion of which
was supported by observation of reactions experienced by other family members or friends. At
minimum, each of them knew people like them who could not discuss their sexuality with
anyone in their family. One respondent remarked that, simply, it was just difficult for a black gay
man to talk to family about being gay.
You know I guess with black families you know there’s already… already so much
pressure… with everything then you come here and drop the big bomb, hey, I’m gay.
You know that kind of… just kind of makes you the black sheep of the family. So I guess
that... that probably contribute to that a little bit, why people don’t tell ‘em. (Bajali et al.,
2012, p. 734)
In their discussion, the authors tracked back to role-flexing. It was described as an
invisibility cloak of that allowed the respondents to blend into their surroundings as a matter of
26
safety. It was a critical practice when one was aware of the stigma and danger that resided in
their environment, particularly when said environment was hostile to homosexuality. That
hostility was fed through several well-meaning avenues, particularly religious values and
teachings. The homophobia that was engendered in this manner made some of the respondents
complicit in it, being that they participated and even reinforced some of the stereotypes that
persisted in result, due to their own internalized homophobia, or acting on formative values that
their families instilled in them. Bajali et al. (2012) characterized this behavior as a contributor to
negative attitudes towards sexuality and even diminished perceptions of self, including lowered
self-esteem and psychological distress. They highlighted that role-flexing and the stigmatization
of femininity in men was rooted in masculine gender-roles expectations, which “value physical
strength and aggression and sexual prowess with women and hold particular expectations of
dress, speech, and behavior” (p. 735). Aside from that fact, Bajali et al. (2012) were clear in
addressing faith, family and the community therein as possible, and critical sources of
condemnation, intolerance, and rejection given prominent role of religion in the community and
its penchant for influencing people and shaping their perspectives. The rejection from these
critical sources of belongingness created the need for modifying one’s outward expression of
identity.
The risk of estrangement from those critical sources of implied that for black men,
coming out was a potentially fruitless endeavor and that perspective disempowered adopting a
gay identity and coming out. Loaicano (1989) examined identity development among black gay
men and women
4
and discussed how the process for integrating a gay identity for them was
nuanced, if not completely different from their white counterparts. His data suggested that,
4
Loiacano uses term “gay” for women to equate lesbian.
27
generally, black gay men and women faced significant challenges in developing a positive gay
identity compared to the experiences of white Americans as they feared ostracization from the
black community and loss of support as a racial minority, disaffect from racism and bias in the
general gay community, and the challenge of integrating at least two identities that were socially
at odds within the groups to which they belonged (Loiacano, 1989). As a result, black Americans
purportedly tended to place less value on coming out than their white counterparts out of self-
preservation (Loiacano, 1989). His study produced three general themes: Finding validation in
the gay and lesbian community, finding validation in the black community, and the need to
integrate identities.
Loiacano defined gay identity development as “the process through which an individual
progresses from an assumed state of heterosexuality to an open, affirmed state of homosexuality”
(1989, p. 21). This definition was rooted in linear stage theory, akin to the proposed concept by
Cass (1979) that sequenced,
(a) a general sense of feeling different; (b) an awareness of same-sex feelings; (c) a point
of crisis in which an individual realizes that his or her feelings can be labeled as
homosexual; and (d) an eventual acceptance and integration of one’s gay identity.
(Loiacano 1989, p. 21)
Gender-role expectations were considered a known factor that complicated that integration, but
race, as a variable in that formula was less understood. Citing Audre Lorde’s idea that black
Americans were under the challenge of having several oppressed identities, Loiacano suggested
black gay individuals struggled to find acceptance given that homosexuality was not widely
accepted in the black community, were not afforded a sufficient level of affirmation among
whites but particularly in the general gay community, so far as to say they were viewed as
28
inferior among them. This in turn affected choices of black gay individuals about coming out,
engaging in relationships, and even becoming politically active in the gay community, all
functions of a positive gay identity (Loiacano, 1989).
The study included six black gay individuals, three men and three women to account for
gender differences in gay identity development. The ages of the group ranged from 25 to 51
years, and all but one was college-educated. Each of them had achieved a positive gay identity
matching Loiacano’s (1989) idea of what that was, “although a few individuals were still
integrating this identity into their overall self-concepts” (p. 22). The following questions were
asked during the 1 to 2-hour interview:
1. When were you first aware of your same-sex feelings, or the sense that your sexual
identity might be different from heterosexuals? 2. What was your experience “coming
out” to yourself? What made it difficult? What helped make it easier? 3. What has been
your experience of “coming out” to others Who has been supportive? 4. What would you
say were/are major barriers to you accepting yourself as a gay man or lesbian? 5. How
would you describe your relationship to the gay/lesbian community as you define this
community? To the Black community as you define it? For example, how supported do
you feel by these two communities as a whole? 5a. Did your “coming out” experience
and identity as a gay man/lesbian woman change your sense of acceptance in the Black
community? Your level of involvement in the Black community? 6. Is there any aspect of
your identity that you consider central at present? If someone were to ask you who you
are, and you were comfortable enough to be open with them, what would you say?
(Loiacano, 1989, p. 22)
29
Prior to the interview, participants were given a document or questionnaire with these questions
to complete before meeting with the interviewer. Five out six of the interviews were recorded
and the data from them were combined with the questionnaire, and sorted into themes (Loiacano,
1989).
Regarding finding validation in the gay and lesbian community, several of the
participants described instances where they felt they did not fit in among their white
counterparts. Paul and Tom recalled being discriminated against in gay bars and noted how the
local gay coalitions for equality no longer reflected a community that included them, going so far
as to say that racism was more overt among white gays (Loiacano, 1989). Larry remarked how
he was frequently subjected to stereotypes, and despite the pressure to fit them, he was unable to
conform to appease them. This ultimately complicated his relationships, socially and
romantically, being repeatedly rejected at dances (Loiacano, 1989).
Several of the participants reported finding refuge in the black community. One remarked
that she relied on the small black community at her predominantly white university for feelings
of acceptance and support. This led her to feel that coming out would jeopardize her place in the
group. As she came to terms with her sexually identity, she continued dating men, but did so as
she feared being outed would “pull her away from what she considered her primary reference
group–Black Americans” (Loiacano, 1989, p. 23). As other participants remarked about being
cautious of being “too out” because of potential consequences for their family as if having a gay
child would taint the family’s reputation, others told of their perceived lack of support from the
black community overall (Loiacano, 1989). Larry spoke of a continued pressure for black men to
live their homosexual lives in secret. He said the general message given by those who were
aware of gays in their environment was that marriage and family always came first and being gay
30
would preclude that. As a result, black men were expected to perform their sexual identity as if
to fit in to the heteronormative role of a straight man, while forced to express their true selves in
bars, clubs, and other secretive places while being invisible to the larger community (Loiacano,
1989). Larry believed that there were no role models for black gay couples, and very little
support for long-term relationships, essentially rendering them futile as opposed to a
heterosexual one, that to be successful romantically was to be counter to one’s true nature in the
case of gay individuals (Loiacano, 1989). In this sense, as Mary recalled, the black community
could perpetuate oppression within itself:
I see more clearly the ways that we perpetuate horizontal violence. I see more clearly that
… those things that we say about White folk can also be true of ourselves. And we indeed
can be our greatest oppressor, which is certainly not any effort on my part to blame the
victim, but just a recognition that we have probably taken too many of the attributes of
the true oppressor and focused out energies … within, rather than clearly identifying who
the oppressor is and then strategizing cohesively to address the real problem [racism].
(Loiacano, 1989, p. 23)
An additional recurring theme was the need to integrate identities and find simultaneous
validation for the various identities one might possess. One method that was reported was getting
involved in or forming organizations specifically for black gay men and/or women. For some of
the participants, these organizations became an avenue of finding ways to make their identities
intersect rather than be continuously parallel (Loiacano, 1989). It helped them to achieve a sense
of belonging that they could not find elsewhere. Finding that sense of belonging, as Loiacano
reported, was acknowledged as a fleeting goal for black and gay individuals with respect to the
31
black community forcing them to seek it elsewhere, creating a sense of isolation within one’s
native community.
Prominent gender theorist, Judith Butler, authored a number of works that influenced
understandings that advanced queer theory and other gender-based theories that help to
understand identity with respect to performance of gender. In their essay in Inside Out, Butler
asserted that identity, with respect to gender and sexuality, is an act of repetition and
reproduction. From their perspective, identity most closely relates to compulsory heterosexuality,
whereas the hegemony on identifying one another relies on a binary that assumes heterogeny.
They argued that “compulsory heterosexuality sets itself up as the original, the true, the
authentic; the norm that determines the real” (Butler, 1900, p. 20). In their theory on gender
performativity, Butler argued that there is no “proper” gender as there is no specific ownership of
masculinity to maleness or femininity to femaleness (1990). It does not belong to one sex or
another. They went on to say that “all gendering is a kind of impersonation and
approximation…there is no original or primary gender…but gender is a kind of imitation for
which there is no original (Butler, 1990, p. 21). Butler theorized that heterosexualized genders
are produced through imitative strategies, that it is performatively “constituted through an
imitation that sets itself up as the origin and the ground of all imitations” (p. 21). Given its
propensity to fail at “approximating its own phantasmatic idealization of itself,” heterosexual
identity is caught in a constant act of reproducing while performatively constituting itself as the
original (Butler, 1990, p. 21). This ultimately challenged societal notions that enshrine
heterosexuality and problematizes homosexuality, as there is no true original to stake a claim to
what any one gender should be, that heterosexuality is illusory, thereby legitimizing the space
that homosexuality inhabits. C.J. Pascoe’s 2005 work on the fag discourse highlighted Butler’s
32
gender performance and the failures that expose incompetence and dissimilation. In it, Pascoe
demonstrated how a “fag” is socially indicative recognized failures of masculinity. They
represented the term fag to represent an expression of a penetrated masculinity in which
...to be penetrated is to abdicate power. Penetrated men symbolize a masculinity devoid
of power, which, in is contradiction, threatens both psychic and social chaos. “Fag” may
be used as a weapon with which to temporarily assert one’s masculinity by denying it to
others…When a boy calls another boy a fag, it means he is not a man, not necessarily that
he is a homosexual. (Pascoe, 2005, p. 330)
In their argument, a fag is not necessarily a static identity. They explain that becoming a fag has
“much to do with failing and masculine tasks of competence, heterosexual prowess and
strength,” and revealing “weakness or femininity” (Pascoe, 2005, p. 330). From this perspective,
fag is a temporary, reparable status given its fluidity with performance, that Pascoe argued is
caused boys to police their behaviors out of fear that the fag identity would be permanently fixed
with definitive recognizable fag behavior that potential fags would strive to avoid (2005).
Richardson (2009) built off of both Butler and Pascoe to examine effeminophobia as it
illuminates what is at the core of the recognizability within the fag discourse, in other words,
what constituted fag-like behavior. Effeminophobia is the fear of effeminacy or gender
transitivity, recognizes behaviors that deviate from gender expectations or as innate or closeted
homosexuality through observance of stereotypes, and are often a conflation of homosexuality
and effeminacy. As such, differences that would qualify the fag label are attached to femininity
being expressed in men as a sign of homosexuality as the lines between genders becomes
blurred. Richardson argued that effeminate men exposed the plasticity of gender, as they
demonstrate that “masculinity is not the natural property of male bodies” and that gender is “not
33
fixed but flexible, and that seeing men challenge the inherent assumption of masculinity
belonging to maleness can deconstruct gender binaries (p. 529). As such, traits of femininity in
men and subpar performances of male gendered identity telegraph difference that demonstrates
effeminacy and are translated as signs of potential gayness (Richardson, 2009). This effectively
contributes to the mechanism to separate the men from the fags that polices masculinity, and
isolates its failures.
The potential conflict here with belongingness to culture and misidentifying with status
quo invoked the concept of borderlands. Suzanne Clisby drew upon the works of several authors
including Kimberlè Crenshaw, bell hooks, and Gloria Anzadlùa to examine current literature on
those living in liminal or marginal spaces at the “borders of socio-cultural, religious, sexual,
ethnic or gender norms” as they experience intersectional marginalization with respect queer
identities of color (2020, p. 1). In her framework, Clisby leaned on those seminal works to apply
a critical lens the marginalization that happens to queer people of color who are so-called border
dwellers to dichotomies like gay/straight, masculine/feminine as well as membership to a culture
or not, like black or not (2020). Clisby echoed Butler’s “queering the scene,” where an
examination of marginal sociocultural spaces to expose previously unrecognized systems of
marginalization and oppression (2020). Through this critical lens, Clibsy argued, new and
“unique ways of seeing and understanding the worlds within which they live” are possible in
addition to “the creation of ‘holistic, relational theories and tactics’ that can enable us ‘to
reconceive or in other ways transform the various worlds’ we inhabit (2020, p. 1). Clisby
featured the work of Emilio Amideo who shed a light on the experience of black queer men
inhabiting borderlands.
34
Amideo discussed the works of black poet and gay activist Essex Hemphill who wrote
about his own marginalization due to AIDS-related stigma and his homosexuality at the
intersection of his racism and culture (2020). Amideo quoted Hemphill,
I now possess only twenty-three T cells [. . .] some of the missing T cells were lost to
racism, a well-known transmittable disease. Some were lost to poverty [. . .].
Homophobia killed quite a few, but so did my rage and [. . .] the wars at home and the
wars within [...]. Actually, there are T cells scattered all about me, at doorways where I
was denied entrance because I was a faggot or a nigga or too poor or too black.
(Hemphill, as cited in Clisby, 2020)
This snippet Amideo selected foreshadowed a longer conversation about implications of
marginalization regarding intersectional components of his identity that placed him at odds with
a recognized norm. For instance, Amideo brought up Hemphill’s blackness to anti-black racism,
his relative socioeconomic status to classism, and his homosexuality to dominant heterosexism.
Amideo centered the metaphorical device in Hemphill’s use of his T cells, infection-fighting
white blood cells, to illustrate through juxtaposition the composite toll battling intersectional
marginalization has had on him; likened to the HIV-virus’s destruction of the immune system,
exhausting its capacity to function (Clisby, 2020, p. 29). Hemphill eventually died of AIDS-
related complications in 1994. Amideo used Hemphill to connect to Sharon Patricia Holland’s
commentary on the marginalization of black queer individuals are confined to a “space of the
dead, since their experience is–like the subject of death–almost unspeakable…” (Clisby, 2020, p.
29). Doubling back to Butler’s queering the scene, Amideo chose Hemphill to bring light into
this space of dead, connecting him to similar experiences of other black queer men. Hemphill
said, “I speak for […] hundreds of thousands of men who live and die in the shadows of secrets,
35
unable to speak of the love that helps them endure and contribute to the race (Clisby, 2020, p.
31). This alludes to a key thematic narrative in the discourse of black masculinity, that the
hegemony of heteropatriarchal standards on black masculinity painfully renders black gender
queer men invisible, in the liminal borderlands. Amideo wrote of Hemphill’s childhood that
growing up in the “ghetto where he had to attend to rigidly prescribed codes of hypermasculine
conduct” or otherwise be looked at as emasculated or called “punk, sissy [or] Negro Faggot”
(Clisby, 2020, p. 34; Riggs, 2017, p. 782). Hemphill talked about the threat of hostility as a black
boy growing up in a homophobic environment influencing the silence of his gayness,
I had to carefully allow my petals to unfold. If I had revealed them too soon, they would
surely have been snatched away, brutalized, and scattered down alleys. I was already alert
enough to know what happened to the flamboyant boys at the school who were called
‘sissies’ and ‘faggots’. I could not have endured then the violence and indignities they
often suffered. (Hemphill, as cited in Clisby, 2020)
Here Amideo used this passage illuminate the threat of danger, violence, certain consequence
from which refuge sought. In Hemphill’s view, this is both observed and experienced and makes
it clear that assimilation is key, lest shame should follow. Amideo also used this passage to
highlight the expectation of consequence that serves as push factor that drives these men into the
borderlands. With author Marlon Rigg’s “Negro Faggot,” Amideo layered this assertion with an
elaborative parallel to Rigg’s explanation of the term.
Negro Faggotry is the rage! Black Gay Men are not. For in the cinematic and television
images of and from Black America as well as the words of music and dialogue which
now abound and seem to address my life as a Black Gay Man, I am struck repeatedly by
the determined, unreasoning, often irrational desire to discredit my claim to blackness
36
and hence to Black Manhood…I am a Negro Faggot, if I believe what movies, TV, and
rap music say about me. Because of my sexuality, I cannot be Black. A strong, proud,
“Afrocentric” Black man is resolutely heterosexual, not even bisexual. Hence I remain a
Negro. My sexual difference is considered of no value; indeed it’s a testament to
weakness, passivity, the absence of real guys – balls. Hence I remain a sissy, punk,
faggot. I cannot be a Black Gay Man because, by the tenets of Black Macho, Black Gay
Man is a triple negation. I am consigned, by these tenets, to remain a Negro Faggot. And
as such I am, not just by the illiterate homophobic thugs in the night, but by many of
Black American culture’s best and brightest…what disturbs–no enrages–me is not so
much the obstacles set before me by whites, which history has conditioned me to expect,
but the traps and pitfalls of planted by my so-called brothers, who because of the same
history should know better. (Riggs, 2017, p. 782)
Riggs’s explanation of the Negro Faggot implied that heterosexuality is a requirement for
membership to blackness and black manhood, making black gay men outsiders by contrast in
this definition (Riggs, 2017). What is more, Riggs alludes to the ubiquity with which this is
signaled, in movies, music, television, even by “Black American culture’s best and brightest,”
suggesting the threat of this invalidation is persistent and pervasive even from the unexpected
(Riggs, 2017, p. 782). Riggs argued that in Black America’s cultural homophobia there is a need
for an “other” within the community on which the “blame for the chronic identity crises
afflicting Black male psyche can be readily displaced; an indispensable Other that functions as
the lowers common denominators of the abject, the baseline transgression beyond which a
Black Man is no longer a man” (2017, p. 782). He concluded, no longer black. This perspective
strengthens Bajali et al.’s (2012) point on black gay men silencing their gayness for
37
sake of critical sources of belongingness. Here it is not just family and culture and religious
affiliation, it the entire racial group and gender that is at risk. This raised the idea operating in
borderlands, where gayness among blackness is silenced to maintain status require a
performance of competency to avoid the shame of difference, where Riggs called out being
“game for play, to be used, joked about, put down, beaten, slapped and bashed” (2017, p. 782).
Performance of gender, and gender roles, and cultural and/or masculine competence to project
authenticity appeared to be a central component to living in the borderlands, lest danger abound.
The above review of the discourse of identity, including hidden identities, stigma, and the
role of race, community and religion reveal a great deal of what black gay men experience along
the way to integrating a black identity and a gay identity. The details herein provide insight to a
multitude of challenges and dangers black gay men must navigate both internally and externally.
This is critical to understanding how these men arrive at a level of comfort with their sexuality,
further alluding to how they open they may be in revealing it. While significant, it only captures
a segment of what black gay men grapple with in terms of disclosing their sexual identity in a
professional setting. To fully understand what gay black men face as teachers in relation to their
choices in disclosing their sexual identity, an examination of the circumstances that present
themselves in the context of a school environment must occur. I need literature that will discuss
how gay black men are confronted with heteropatriarchal norms that layer on to the challenges
that are already present with their identity formation. Discussions of how those norms coupled
with the heteronormativity of schools and racism in its community may prevent gay black
teachers from displaying their authentic identity in that environment is critical.
38
Gayness and School Culture
This second body of literature explores multiple facets of school culture, and how the
several layers within it affect agency of black gay teachers. I start by exploring the reported
experiences of black gay teachers in typical public-school settings, the conflicts that arise when
heteropatriarchal expectations are at odds with one’s identity, and how black gay men may not fit
in to the social norms of school community. As black gay men who are teachers come to terms
with their identity, the literature discussed how they may choose to express themselves in the
classroom, and what the perceived benefits in the classroom are when the development of a
positive gay identity is achieved. The literature then turns to the construction of teachers’ gay
identities, how they come to terms with expressing who they are and the aspects of a school
culture that engender comfort in that endeavor. In considering what would detract from that
comfort, I turn to certain aspect of school culture that many gay teachers confront when deciding
to coming out how individuals with invisible identities navigated stigma, threats to credibility,
discrimination by coworkers and school administration, micro-cultures in schools that ostracize
gay individuals, and ultimately the racism that black male teachers may experience, augmenting
the previously mentioned issues. Lastly, I turn to the benefits that can result from persevering
through the perceived obstacles to coming out, including an increase in the visibility of gayness
leading to the creation of a greater acceptance of “the other” in a school culture, increased
advocacy for students by gay teachers, and ultimately a reduction of advertent and inadvertent
oppression in schools.
39
The Black Supermen
Woodson and Pabon (2016) sought to understand the lives of black male teachers, the
professional expectations set upon them, and how they interacted with their own social identities.
In doing so, they found that those expectations often failed to “acknowledge diverse expressions
of blackness and maleness” (Woodson & Pabon, 2016, p. 57). They argued that this was visible
through a black feminist construct, heteropatriarchy, male-female gender binaries, and
heterosexual identities, family units, and sexual expressions. They chose an intersectional lens,
converging with black feminist, black queer and critical race theories to capture the various
exposures to oppression black men endured through “systems and practices that oppress based
on simultaneous membership in multiple categories” for the advancement of the heteropatriarchy
(Woodson & Pabon, 2016, p. 59). With this examination, Woodson and Pabon sought to increase
the awareness of educators and how they “understand, communicate, and embody assumptions
of race, gender, and sexuality along the teacher education pipeline” (2016, p. 57). They
interviewed three black male teachers and found very different, yet related experiences in a
heteropatriarchal assumptive school environment to expose the diverse racial, gendered and
sexual identities that black males possessed.
Their work was contextualized with issues in the landscape of education regarding black
men. Given the sparse number of black male educators, 2% according to the statistics Woodson
and Pabon (2016) cited, there was a need to create a more welcoming environment to attract
more black men to education. Should that goal be realized, it had implications for the racial
achievement gap and could help to deconstruct the school-to prison pipeline. However, this had
implications for the embodiment of these black so-called saviors (Woodson & Pabon, 2016).
These “Black-Supermen” were called to descend upon the black community so that it might save
40
itself, a concept that prevailed upon a monolithic racial and gendered identities. The criteria for
which these men qualified were based on stereotype-laden standards to filter out what a “good”
black male candidate would be–one with traits conducive of being a role model: “married,
college educated, gainfully employed…likely to own his own home…[ and is reflective of]
heteropatriarchal assumptions of cisgender, heterosexual male identities” (Woodson & Pabon,
2016, p. 60). These ideas of “successful” portrayal of black masculinity were to replicate
approximate dominant social norms with the “white normality-Black deviancy framework that
accompanies racism…the heterosexual-homosexual binary that supports heterosexism…and a
class system that grants propertied individuals more power and status than those who lack it”
(Woodson & Pabon, 2016, p. 60). The authors suggested two critical issues with this
presumptive standard. It would result in certain cohesive and acceptable methods, pedagogical
choices, and ways of thinking, and that it would ultimately discourage black queer individuals
from becoming teachers as it was excluding of their identities and their experiences.
The study utilized interviews to understand the life events of their participants. They used
interviews to capture the data to add voice to what they determined was a lack of focus on
educational research and policy from this particular demographic: black male pre-service and in-
service teachers. The authors aimed for U.S.-born candidates who self-identified as black or
African American and attended urban schools as students. They used criterion sampling to find
pre-service teachers in education in the same program where they taught and secured the
participation of two individuals. By reaching out to faculty and other colleagues, one in-service
teacher was found. Of the two preservice teachers, one was cisgender heterosexual, the second
was transgender and gay. Both were students at a predominantly white institution. The in-service
teacher was also cisgender heterosexual representing an urban school in New York. Each author
41
conducted two in-person interviews with each participant ranging from 60-90 minutes. The
interviews focused on their lives as pre-service teachers, or in the case of the in-service teacher,
his life before and after becoming a teacher. Each interview was at a private location of the
participant’s choosing. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. The authors did not
explicitly delineate a specific research question but listed the following to describe the nature of
the questions asked of the pre-service teachers:
Talk to me about your journey to here [the teacher education program], and how you
think your identity as a Black male has influenced that journey.” Subsequent probing
questions included: 1. How did your identity as a Black male matter to you in that
moment? How do you think it mattered to others? 2. What did you learn about race,
gender, and sexuality through that moment? What do these lessons mean for your future
teaching? (Woodson & Pabon, 2016, p. 63)
The following questions were respective to the in-service teacher’s interview:
I want to talk about your life becoming a teacher. Tell me in detail the experiences
you’ve had as a Black male child, adolescent, and student. Tell me what in these
experiences brought you to teaching.” She followed these prompts with the following
questions: 1. Can you tell me about a significant experience you’ve had teaching? What
happened? Why does this particular moment stand out for you? 2. How do you
understand your present experiences teaching? 3. How do they relate to your experiences
having been a Black male student? (Woodson & Pabon, 2016, p. 63)
The study was limited by the reliance on the participants’ ability to self-report their experiences,
and the study’s small sample size. Data was placed into groups of passages that resonated with
ways that heteropatriarchy emerged in the participants’ lives.
42
The results were presented as chronological vignettes that “illuminate how
heteropatriarchal assumptions, including hegemonic notions of cisgender masculinity and
compulsory heterosexuality, seemed to influence either their pre-service teaching or teaching
experience” (Woodson & Pabon, 2016, p. 64).
Dickson, the transgender preservice teacher recalled presenting himself as a normalized
masculine male significant of his environment, yet was still being questioned about his gender
with questions of “What are you?” (Woodson & Pabon, 2016, p. 64). The interrogatives
prevailed in his fieldwork experience. Dickson described the first in-person meeting with his
mentor in which the mentor, Mr. Davis, introduced him as “she” to the students. The two
discussed Dickson’s gender identity at a subsequent lunch meeting where Dickson came out to
his mentor as transgender. Mr. Davis questioned his plans for self-presentation, pronoun
preference, and revealing his gender identity to the class. Dickson had misgivings with Mr.
Davis’s having to have gender expression be explained to him as a member of the faculty. As a
result, Dickson had trouble re-introducing himself to that particular class, remaining as he was
introduced as female for that class, and being male in other classes for the remainder of the
semester (Woodson & Pabon, 2016). Dickson attributed this decision to his perceptions of his
social, cultural, and professional expectations held of him, by the black community, citing his
invisibility in the greater struggle for rights for the black and gay communities, in a sense both
accepting and lamenting representation set for him. He was essentially being marginalized by the
construct of a “good” black male teacher and made it more difficult for him to find his place in
the educational environment as he was also being excluded from spaces geared towards
empowering black male students.
43
In my life, [being transgender] means that I will not be celebrated in all of these
initiatives to mentor Black males. [The research articles] say male, Black male, but they
really mean masculine looking and masculine acting. Penises. They should probably
check! [laughter] But they kind of base it on how Black males are missing somehow,
Black fathers and, but they don’t mean males. Black males. And father figure is different
than male. I am a Black male, but they don’t mean me. (Woodson & Pabon, 2016, p. 64)
Woodson and Pabon characterized Dickson’s experiences as a response to his identity and
expression being incongruous to the norms and expectations of the heteropatriarchy, and
consequently, experienced marginalization and a distortion of his identity because of those
expectations even though he adopted masculine roles and characteristics simply because he was
transgender.
Jamel Brown, the in-service teacher, seemingly fit the mold of the good black male
teacher. He engaged his students with pedagogical choices that were more affirming of the
students’ intellectual potential and of their identities in the context of their environment. He
avoided being the stern authority figure in the classroom and faced resistance from his students.
Brown recalled his students as saying, “The reason why we act like that with you…because you
are soft” (Woodson & Pabon, 2016, p. 65). Brown had no interest in trying to earn respect from
the students through control, but instead was perceived as effeminate and soft. After discussions
with colleagues, Brown attempted to use a “hard” persona with harsher verbal discourse but was
further rejected by his students. This attempt, Brown noted, was him trying to conform to the
normative school culture. He was pressured to fit in to the “hegemonic notion of black
masculinity by embodying heteropatriarchal identity norms” yet was further pushed away for not
being credible nor authentic” (Woodson & Pabon, 2016, p. 65). The authors noted that Brown’s
44
experience was the result when black men did not meet what students and teachers expected of
black men; that they were not black or man enough.
Wesley Leech was brought up brought in upper-middle class, suburban neighborhoods
and attended private schools. He reported that because of his upbringing, he was a little different.
For him, being a stereotypical black man was not an option when he was the only black student
in his graduating class. Leech disassociated himself from the “expressions and interests attached
to stereotypical black male identities,” such as rap music, profanity, slang, etc. and characterized
them as the kind who always had to prove they were black (Woodson & Pabon, 2016, p. 66). His
ideas of what it meant to be a good black male were not dissimilar to those that fit within the
heteropatriarchal idea that they approximated dominant cultural norms, creating challenges
within himself as he developed his own professional identity. Leech discussed Principal Joe
Clark, portrayed by Morgan Freeman in the film “Lean on Me,” and mentioned that he never had
that kind of tough, father-figure, or superhero-like characteristics. He dismissed the traits Clark
had as laudable but thug-like, in that he was aggressive, displayed anger and cursed at
colleagues, parents and students. He said, “That’s not respect, that’s fear. They were afraid of
Morgan Freeman, even though they loved him, they were afraid because he was essentially
unstable” (Woodson & Pabon, 2016, p. 67). Morgan Freeman’s character typified the good black
man, but Leech rejected this, and faced challenges with his students as a result. He was perceived
as gay because he was not a rapper or a gangster or an athlete and wore khakis and Toms, thus
his perception of credibility as an authority figure was undermined. Because he carried himself
different from most “most black guys,” he was culturally incongruent in his surroundings and
likened himself to his white female mentor, saying that he was no better off than she was.
Leech’s perception, as Woodson and Pabon (2016) noted, was that his students and his mentor
45
believed they were in line with the heteropatriarchal concept that his gender and race should
inform his social behavior in predictable way, but because he did not behave as expected, he
faced consequences.
From this data, Woodson and Pabon reflect that there was an assumption that gender was
a static, natural binary that controlled behaviors, and that among those behaviors, expressions of
masculinity were more worth of authority and credibility than others. The authors suggest that
“These expectations render Black males who transgress dominant expectations of masculinity
invisible or illegitimate” (p. 68). While the experiences of the men above were not representative
of all black male teachers, they did indicate problematic reliance of stereotypes for professional
identities in the educational environment that limited the types of interactions black men had
with students and colleagues (Woodson & Pabon, 2016).
Invisible Identities
Beatty and Kirby (2006) conducted a review of literature that took a deep look into the
challenges faced by individuals with invisible identities in the workplace.
5
They defined
invisible identities to include but not be limited to sexuality, religion, and disability. In their
examination, Beatty and Kirby argued that stigma was partially the result of discordance in
social integration and delineated four dimensions of stigma: responsibility for the stigma, the
course of the stigma over time, moral threat, and effects on performance.
6
Beatty and Kirby (2006) began their review by first establishing a clear difference
between visible and invisible social groups to show the conundrum that existed for those with
5
Although the study was written to address workplace issues, details related specifically to that context are
purposefully omitted to narrow the focus to stigma and invisible identities. I only include workplace issues to the
extent that they provide insight into my dissertation topic.
6
Due to the lack of relevance to my dissertation topic, details regarding performance as a dimension of stigma that
are directly tied to assessment of one’s ability in the workplace is omitted.
46
hidden identities. They suggested that age, outwardly projected gender, and race were most
easily distinguishable and did not necessarily have to be revealed, as they were assumed. Hidden
identities were those like religion and sexuality that could be concealed. Individuals with hidden
identities encountered various negative effects in “social integration” or interactions among a
group of people (Beatty & Kirby, 2006). The authors forwarded a logic that highlighted a
foundational tenet to negative social interactions due to these identities, that visibility of
stigmatized difference was a prerequisite. If one had found solace in hiding one’s sexuality, for
example, in a setting where its being kept private prevented adverse social interactions, that
person might seek to keep it hidden to prevent exposure and reaction to stigma (Beatty & Kirby,
2006).
Beatty and Kirby (2006) stated that in social interactions, people assessed blame based on
one’s “perceived responsibility in acquiring the stigma” (p. 34). As such, Beatty and Kirby
identified two types of stigma: existential and achieved (2006). They defined existential stigmas
as those that came by birth or were innately attributed to their person, which included race,
gender, some disabilities, and sexuality. The authors used the literature to suggest that should the
stigma be one that was innate and immutable, then the individual was deemed less culpable
(Beatty & Kirby, 2006). On the opposite end of the spectrum, they explained that achieved
stigmas were those that were connected to one’s behavior, that the individual was “morally
responsible” for his/her/their stigma due to a lack of self-restraint, poor choices, etc. (Beatty &
Kirby, 2006, p. 34). These achieved stigmas were associated with a higher level of stigmatization
as they were deemed character flaws, such as smokers diagnosed with lung cancer, the morbidly
obese, and as marked by LGBT history, gays who contracted HIV/AIDS. Beatty and Kirby
(2006) asserted that the social response to people with achieved stigma was to punish those who
47
fell into this category, since the perception was their own failure was the cause of their
circumstance. Because there was general belief that sexuality was a choice rather than a
developed part of identity, gay individuals were represented in achieved stigma. As Beatty and
Kirby highlighted, the belief of homosexuality being a choice was foundational to the long
history of the persecution of gays, rather than it being an acquired trait, thereby perpetuating the
achieved stigma among the mainstream (2006).
Proposing another aspect of stigma, Beatty and Kirby discussed the term “course,” which
referred to trajectory over time, such that some differences were permeable and others were
simply permanent (2006, p. 35). With this, some identities were noted as transient, being that
properties of a particular difference might be lost over time and one might be removed from a
stigmatized group (Beatty & Kirby, 2006). For example, a mental illness could be muted through
successful, progressive treatment, curing the patient, thus supplanting him/her/them from a
stigmatized group. In light of this, Beatty and Kirby suggested that less permanent conditions
carried less stigma as it was within the person’s control to remove oneself from the shame he/she
had brought upon him/herself. Again, with the perception of homosexuality being a choice, it
should carry a similar malleability. A mere additional choice to de-gay oneself should be the cure
(Beatty & Kirby, 2006). By this logic, sexuality should be less stigmatizing since central to that
argument was that sexuality could be selected, making gayness a temporary condition. However,
it is not because as Beatty and Kirby suggested, homosexuality was perceived to be a trait of
moral deficiency or a so-called moral threat, making the stigma less malleable.
Beatty and Kirby (2006) explained moral threat to be a relational phenomenon, such that
offending attributes were not themselves stigmatizing, but were made to be so through meaning
defined by the offended party. They said, it “is a matter of the social and political attitude of
48
observers, specifically how much the observers align themselves with opposing political or
cultural groups and dominant cultural sentiments” (Beatty & Kirby, 2006, p. 37). The notions
that kept an identity, action or status stigmatized were acquired through socialization among
one’s culture or group. Homosexuality had long been viewed by many in the United States as
immoral and perverse, and laws, statutes, and social ill-will toward it was backed by religious
dogma (e.g., sodomy, crimes against nature, etc.). The authors went on to highlight that much of
the stigma surrounding homosexuality came from stereotypes of heightened salacious and sexual
activity and wanton disregard for the natural order, akin to the stories of Sodom and Gamorrah in
the Christian bible, thus suggesting stigma for being gay was perpetuated through socialization,
and perhaps unwarranted on an individual basis (2006). That notwithstanding, ownership of
one’s hidden identities despite the acceptance of others had a number of implications for not only
for the individual but also for the environment one occupied, and in the case of homosexuality,
coming out was a difficult process that required numerous considerations prior to embracing that
identity publicly.
Radical Honesty
In the same discourse of navigating identity and stigma, William DeJean drew upon his
own experiences as an out gay teacher for inspiration to research the lived experiences of lesbian
and gay teachers to authentically represent themselves in the classroom. The core of the study
was to explore how each of the publicly gay teachers employ the concept of radical honesty. He
cited Blanton (1996) to explain that someone who lives based on the principles of radical
honesty “prefers language that reveals what is so, whether it’s about someone else, the world, or
himself” (p. 63). DeJean used Parker Palmer’s (1998) rationale to argue that radical honesty is
critical for the growth of not only teachers but also the entire educational community because
49
“effective teaching is established from authentic selfhood” (2008). What makes honesty radical,
again according to Palmer, is that it is frequently disruptive to a system that “fears the personal
and seeks safety in the technical, the distant, and the abstract” (Palmer, 1998, p. 12).
The study revealed five themes: (1) Being out means a commitment to radical honesty,
(2) a commitment to radical honesty impacts the teacher and his or her students as and their
classroom community as a whole, (3) identity shapes literacy philosophies and practices, (4) a
school’s leadership and geographic location impacts gay and lesbian K-12 educator’s quest to
participate in radical honesty, (5) a teacher’s identity is an important aspect of the creation of a
quality teacher (DeJean, 2008).
DeJean found his participants through the use of national education list-serves, gay and
lesbian contacts and networks. In result, he interviewed 10 teachers in the state of California:
five males and five females. Of those participants, six worked in Southern California, and the
remaining four in Northern California. Seven worked in high school, one in middle school and
two in elementary, with four in urban settings and six in suburban settings. Each of the
participants were Caucasian. DeJean noted that no teachers of color responded to his requests for
participation, which is noted as a limitation of his study. With these participants, he aimed to
answer the following research questions:
What are the lived experiences of out gay and lesbian K-12 educators? What are the
inter- connections between being out, pedagogical beliefs, and pedagogical practices?
What factors support gay and lesbian educators to remain out within their classroom
environments? (DeJean, 2008, p. 61)
DeJean used an interpretive method as it enabled him to gather the perspectives, opinions, and
lived experiences of “out gay and lesbian K-12 educators with the aims of improving practices of
50
education” (p. 61). In conducting the study, DeJean collected data through interviews and focus
groups. The majority of the interviews were conducted and recorded in the participants’ own
classrooms, and each participant were sent transcripts of their responses in order to confirm
and/or clarify their words. As a means to triangulate the data, DeJean conducted focus groups in
both of the major areas where the participants worked. The participants were tasked with
responding to the interview questions as a group. DeJean (2008) noted that the discussions were
robust as many of participants were meeting out gay and lesbian educators for the first time.
The findings revealed that each of the teachers practiced radical honesty in their
professional lives in a manner that consistently revealed their own truth. The use of decorations
in the classrooms that equipped the room with books and posters and pictures that were inclusive
reflections of the world. They included their partners in their professional lives, similarly to those
of their heterosexual counterparts, and “participated in open and honest dialogue with their
classes and individual students” (DeJean, 2008, p. 63). To elaborate, DeJean cited one of his
participants who frequently discussed her weekends with her wife. She felt that she should have
the same comfort her heterosexual counterparts enjoy, being free to share details of her private
life without the burden of excessive scrutiny.
DeJean further surmised from his participants that a commitment to radical honesty
impacts the teachers and his or her students and their classroom community as a whole (2008).
DeJean found that as the participants were living openly in the classroom, they endured negative
consequences of that decision and persisted. Two of the participants were accused of “recruiting
youth into the gay and lesbian lifestyle,” while another had the word “dyke” painted in her
classroom (DeJean, 2008, pp. 64-65). Quite simply, being out exposed them to criticism. Yet,
fear was the operative word to describe the emotional experience living in the classroom closet.
51
DeJean said, “Making a commitment to radical honesty impacted them personally by freeing up
energy once consumed in hiding” (2008, p. 65). Other participants noted that being out impacted
students. It engendered a safe space for the student-outsiders to be in their classroom to “hang
out” and enabled others to seek their gay and lesbian teachers for advice and support as role
models. One participant is quoted as saying,
I think that there’s a bigger sense of trust. A realness. That what I’m saying is from the
heart and that they can believe it. And I think that goes into what I’m teaching. ...I think
that it helps that they know that I’m going to be truthful with them no matter what I’m
talking about. (DeJean, 2008, p. 65)
These experiences, DeJean suggests, demonstrate that radical honesty has significant
implications for students personally and academically. It is hallmark of education being more
than acquisition of subject matter and socialization, but a beacon that assist students in moving
beyond traditional education structures, social barriers, and to be radically honest themselves
(DeJean, 2008).
Another theme that was revealed in DeJean’s work is the concept of identity shaping
literacy and practices. Central to this idea is how a teacher’s identity shapes their literacy
philosophy and is supported by their views and values (DeJean, 2008). The author recalled how
his own training as an English teacher excluded the use of his own perspectives to develop
curricula to teach his students with the expectation that the established curriculum was sufficient,
citing a “one size fits all” methodology (DeJean, 2008). What was lacking, DeJean recalled, was
his own reflections to inform his curricular choices. The participants demonstrated their
consensus with this notion with their own anecdotes. The fears of their formative years, living in
isolation and being fearful of people discovering their sexuality, transformed into retrospective
52
wisdom. These memories and experiences were reported as tools for constructing their methods
for teaching literacy, reaching beyond school-sanctioned literacy for both interpersonal and
intrapersonal literacy for “greater understanding of their individual identities and beliefs… [and]
provide a critical awareness and respect for the identities and values of others” (DeJean, 2008, p.
66). The participants believed in the importance of developing “powerful” self-awareness as a
means of empowerment to better their chances to successfully participate in the world (DeJean,
2008).
Each of the participants acknowledged their administrators and their school’s relative
location factored greatly in their ability to practice radical honesty. DeJean noted that because
school leadership sets the tone of a school, they are critical in a school’s development of an
environment that “values inclusion, honors diversity, and insists on a culture of respect” (2008,
p. 67). It is in this type of environment where gay and lesbian teachers are more free to teach
authentically. To demonstrate this, DeJean highlighted several instances where leadership being
a key function of the participants living out in the classroom:
Jodie’s superintendent viewed her sexual orientation as an asset to the district. Rick
valued his principal as a friend, colleague, and mentor. Erin worked for a principal who
sought diversity when hiring staff and supported her decision to be out within her
classroom. (2008, p. 67)
This is to reflect the idea that administrators are essential to the comfort of teacher’s ability to
come out. Their support is critical in mitigating potential pitfalls and pushback from community
members and parents of students who do not agree with out teachers’ portrayal of radical
honesty. DeJean described one of his participants recollecting a time when a parent anonymously
called the school to accusing him of being a radical homosexual. The participant’s principal
53
simply told him that he would take care of it and for him not to worry. School leadership as a
defense mechanism relieves the stress that out teachers may encounter from stakeholders who
are hostile toward them (DeJean, 2008).
In addition to school leadership being an asset in this regard, DeJean highlighted that
geographic location has strong implications for teachers’ ability to be out, and in result, practice
radical honesty. As reported, some locales may be more accepting of gays and lesbians than
others. For instance, one participant chose to work in West Los Angeles simply because of its
diversity and inclusive nature. It was enabling of her expressiveness. Those in the northern part
of California, where this is a larger gay and lesbian population, found comfort as well since
being gay was “not so foreign” (DeJean, 2008, p. 68). Additionally, anti-discrimination laws
offer additional protections in the workplace. They have “encouraged the establishment of
educational policies in their [school] districts…[and] provide protection needed to teach
authentically” (DeJean, 2008, p. 68).
DeJean’s analysis finally revealed that the participants pointed to their own experiences
and challenges derived from their sexual identities in a K-12 environment enriched the quality of
their teaching. They pointed to a teacher’s identity and integrity as a major part of their specific
vantage on curriculum, and that it was unique to themselves. Being “real and honest, and
caring…and someone who is able to move past fear to lower his or her protective barriers” is
when a teacher authentic within the classroom (DeJean, 2008, p. 69). DeJean viewed what the
participants’ experiences revealed through the study as a catalyst for the expansion of views on
what comprises teacher quality, beyond simply subject-matter knowledge. His definition of a
quality teacher combines content-knowledge with “pedagogical awareness and critical self-
54
knowledge” as teachers are generally remembered not for how much they taught but for their
“personal attributes, physical characteristics and teacher style (DeJean, 2008, p. 69).
Coming Out in the Classroom
Just as heteropatriarchal expectations are limiting factors of identity expressions of black
men, this issue exists with school cultural norms curbing expressions of sexual identity for gay
black men as well, ultimately affecting their perceived agency in coming out. Jackson (2006)
was interested in learning what factors contributed to a teacher’s coming out in the classroom.
She indicated the likelihood of most schools having a number of gay teachers, and they were
forced to navigate a number of situations and choices to either hide who they were or to be open.
Additionally, Jackson pushed back on other studies that characterized coming out as a simple
dichotomy of “in or out” and instead argued that outness existed on a continuum, that being open
about sexual orientation often occurred on a case-by-case basis. Navigating those expressions of
self-required continuous scrutiny of contextual cues for their risks and other potential effects to
determine behavior and displays of identity. For teachers, Jackson argued, this scrutiny was a
repetitive process that occurred with each new group of students every year, making coming out
or not a never-ending process wrought with fear, anxiety, or excitement. As those decisions
happened, the situations they navigated contributed to their identity formation as gay teachers,
and as such, Jackson asked what factors promoted or prohibited the construction of identities of
gay teachers? Her data presented themes that explored personal characteristics (personality, race,
age) gender conformity, family status, and professional experiences.
Jackson interviewed nine gay and lesbian teachers a total of four times using a semi-
structured format. Additionally, Jackson collected teaching artifacts and conducted a focus group
with the participants. All of them self-identified gay, two were closeted, six were openly gay,
55
and one was on the verge of coming out. Each of the teachers taught in a K-12 setting, teaching a
range of subjects and grade levels. All the participants were white with ages ranging from early
20s to late 50s. Jackson used a constructivist grounded theory approach to analyze the data.
A dominant idea that emerged from the interviews was the notion that coming out was a
means for two identities that were previously seen as irreconcilable to converge. Coming out was
viewed as a last stage of growth for some of the participants, noting that prior to their
declaration, their two identities as teachers and gay were completely separate (Jackson, 2006).
The merging of the two identities marked a shift in thinking about their own teaching and
gayness, with one participant noting that embracing the two is empowering, even for one’s career
trajectory compared to that of those who were not out (Jackson, 2006). Another participant found
it difficult to even imagine seeing her two identities as separate, saying,
I see your teaching practices as being part of your personality. Part of my personality is
being a lesbian. Therefore, how do I separate it out? And I don’t....So, how do I
compartmentalize myself like that? I don’t and I don’t worry about it. I feel like it’s all a
part of a whole.” (Jackson, 2006, p. 33)
As those ideas persisted, Jackson noted the internal and external factors presented above as
major themes (personality, family status, etc.) were not isolated factors as participants described
complex interactions among them when determined the feasibility of their coming out in the
classroom.
Jackson highlighted that among the data, individual “circumstances created atmospheres
where some [personal] characteristics became more salient than others” (2006, p. 33). Some like
race were immutable, others such as age were changeable over time, those like religion were
chosen. Among the largest of factors that contribute to “movement along the gay teacher identity
56
development process” was personality (Jackson, 2006, p. 34). Personality was viewed as a
primary motivating factor for their actions. The participants had trouble differentiating between
personality and gayness when asked to describe what they would be like if they were
heterosexual. One participant stated that her personality and her gayness informed each other,
that her personality caused her to challenge everything that was around her,
7
attributing that to
her being gay (Jackson, 2006). Race was brought up as another important factor, although the
participants did not directly bring up race on their own. When questioned as to whether race
complicated coming out, affecting their comfort level as a gay teacher, most either responded
that they did not know or assumed it would (Jackson, 2006). Most hesitated when discussing the
potential impact race had in this situation, noting their inability to be in the shoes of a person of a
different race, whereas others who taught in racially diverse communities did display a level of
understanding. One participant was quoted as saying,
I have a much easier time being white. I’m very aware of that. I know from research and
from friends that it’s much harder to be a member of an ethnic minority or a religious
minority that’s pretty disapproving. You want to be who you are but yet you risk losing
the support of your ethnic or religious community. (Jackson, 2006, p. 34)
One participant remarked that he had difficulty responding simply because he did not know any
black teachers, and logically by extension, very many black people, more specifically, black gay
people (Jackson, 2006). Jackson suggested that interactions with people of other races sensitized
them to the effects of dual minority identity roles.
Age was shown to increase the likelihood of coming out, with one participant suggesting
an increased internal desire for integrity, “I was getting older. I needed to live my life honestly”
7
The author did not elaborate on this. I assume the phrase to mean that participant was critical of her surroundings
and contexts.
57
(Jackson, 2006, p. 35). Others noted a deteriorated need for external validation, creating
circumstances like Carolyn’s. She discussed consistently rejecting the normalized and expected
life timelines of heterosexuals, as in getting married and having children. She continued “as you
hit those ages where those happen and it’s not happening, you realize that … you can’t deceive
yourself into thinking that nobody notices any more” (Jackson, 2006, p. 35). The participants
noted that people judged them differently according to their ages. Jackson noted that age made
older participants’ comfort increase as they perceived others to be think of them as less of a risk.
Religion affected participants in various ways dependent upon how devout they were. For
several of them, their religious identity did not influence their teaching, and was presented as a
passive identity. For participant Glen, coming out was deliberately done to improve his
effectiveness in the classroom, but displaying his connection to his Jewish faith was not
intentional nor thought to be necessary, even when asked about being a role model. He felt his
being a gay role model was more salient for his students than his being Jewish as he was possibly
the only gay person they knew. Patrick and Tony were at odds about their connection to
Christianity. Patrick initially believed to fully give his life to God and teach at a Christian school,
he would have to disavow his gayness (Jackson, 2006). On the other hand, Tony severed ties
with the Catholic church before coming out to himself.
Families, biological, adoptive, and elective, played critical roles in the participants’
growth as teachers in various ways. Feelings of support from family resulted in improved self-
confidence in some participants, whereas for others family was not a factor (Jackson, 2006). Not
having familial support for developing a strong self-concept, was not an inhibiting factor for
their growth as gay teachers. Families with people whom the participants chose were noted as
major sources of support as well as determinants in relation to their comfort levels at school. One
58
participant discussed how her partner’s lack of support, being closeted herself, made her coming
out a painful experience. She remarked about how she struggled to do so without that support,
indicating that when families of choice did not give the expected support, the difficulty of
opening up about one’s sexual identity increased (Jackson, 2006).
Support in the school environment was also a factor in choices to come out. In the
workplace, participants experienced more support the more their families of choice reflected
heterosexual norms of having partners and children (Jackson, 2006). Additionally, the more the
individual fit into expected heterosexual timeline norms, the easier it was to operate within one’s
chosen disclosure status. Being young and single made it easier to be closeted because one was
not expected to have an established family, thus easing efforts to hide one’s personal
relationships (Jackson, 2006). To the contrary, being older and single only brought more
questions as the individual no longer fit expectational norms. As participant Patrick remarked,
My perception is that people perceive partnered people as being stable and predictable
whereas someone who’s single, who knows why they’re single? Or who knows what
they’re looking for? I worry about what people’s perceptions are. So I think I’m viewed
as less stable. I’m viewed as being more apt to go at and drink, viewed as more apt to
being able to go out and party and be less responsible. (Jackson, 2006, p. 39)
The perception of stability that came with having a partner was noted as a benefit among
participants. Being in a relationship drew conversations around the experiences therein and
ushered in a relatability, whereas being simply being gay drew uncomfortable discussions around
sexuality (Jackson, 2006). Having children further normalized the image of gay teachers, fitting
the heterosexual expectations of family structure, fostering acceptance and rejecting otherness
(Jackson, 2006). As one participant explained, “I can talk about the kids just like all the straight
59
teacher can; it gives me one more point of reference with straight people the single gay people
don’t have. It makes a very big difference” (Jackson, 2006, p. 39). With this, Jackson simply
deduced that the more a gay teacher’s life situations resembled the heterosexual timeline with
children and a partner, the more accepting others were, and the greater the likelihood of coming
out (Jackson, 2006).
Professional experiences were noted as influencing levels of comfort with outness.
Jackson recalled “as comfort level with teacher increased, so did comfort with being out (2006,
p. 40). A positive reputation as a teacher resulted in higher self-confidence, and a diminished
amount of care in what others thought. The inverse was also reflected in the participants’
responses. The more confidence they had in their teaching ability, the more confidence they had
in themselves to come out. As Jackson suggested, comfort increasing as gay and as a teacher was
a reciprocal function in teacher growth, blurring causal lines. What was certain was that having
tenure, which meant greater job security, made it easier to come out.
Subject matter was both an enabling and disabling factor in decisions to come out. Some
disciplines lent themselves directly toward discussions of sexuality that was germane to the
curricular discourse, like health or humanities. Carolyn remarked that she stayed closeted
because of her subject. As a health teacher, “I didn’t want people to know I was gay because here
I am talking about sex and all this stuff,” thus blocking her agency, at least temporarily (Jackson,
2006, p. 42). In humanities, as Duncan noted, gave direct access to discussions of human issues
including sexuality and its role in history, and was flexible enough to provide teachers an
opportunity to ground their curriculum in gayness to a certain extent (Jackson, 2006). That
positionality allowed him to prepare his students for his own coming out. Tony equated special
education with civil rights, making it analogous to one another in the “big picture of trying to
60
make progress” (Jackson, 2006, p. 42). Stephanie discussed her belief that there were more gay
special education teachers than there were straight teachers because they understood what it was
like to be outside the norm and they knew what it was like to be given a hard time (Jackson,
2006).
Grade level presented more of a nuance among the intersection of the teachers’
experiences. For teachers of older students, coming out was easier. Younger students were less
likely to ask questions, making it easier to stay in the closet, and concerns on the part of parents
were quieting (Jackson, 2006). Middle school-age was noted as a concern as it was a time of
discovery for many students that age. Glen remarked,
[My sexual orientation] definitely influences my choice of grade levels to teach. That I
can certainly attribute to my sexuality. Seventh grade was the time when, and I know I’m
not alone in this, things regarding my identity and sexuality were coming up for me in my
life and, from my understanding, this was true for other people as well. I know what a
difference a single educator would have made, one who included GLBT themes in the …
voices in the curriculum. (Jackson, 2006, p. 43)
High school was unanimously regarded as the easiest level to come out. Participants
noted that students were yearning to be adults and to be trust and be knowledgeable about things
beyond their scope. Additionally, parents were viewed as less restrictive and guarding of the
kinds of conversations that discussing sexuality would allow (Jackson, 2006). As comfort levels
varied among high school ages, it was generally accepted among the participants that as the ages
rose, so did the comfort level with being a gay teacher.
Rasmussen (2004) conducted an assessment of contemporary literature that highlighted
the discourse of “coming out,” the valorization of it and the complexities therein. She argued that
61
praise embedded in the declaration of coming out ignore intersectional marginalization
disempower coming out for less-privileged group. Her writing, focused in the context of K-12
teachers, drew on the notions of disclosing one’s sexuality as a simple act of ownership of one’s
hidden identity, advocacy for a suppressed and historically oppressed group, and pedagogical
efforts to unsettle heterosexuality to weaken heteronormativity and include more sexual diversity
in schools. Rasmussen used the literature to argue the purpose of normalizing and
contextualizing homosexuality in the classroom, was to engage students in various moral,
political, and pedagogical issues. Coming out, in a sense, helped to facilitate that, if one was to
isolate that experience in a single, accepting act devoid of all backlash and stigma. However, she
argued and brought forth literature to show that the act of coming out had several challenges and
its discourse should encompass them. Without proper understanding and context, coming out
produced for others the notion that the progressive arc of homosexual identity development
resulted in that declaratory act, and that in and of itself obscured the complex navigation often
required to make that decision. The discourse that Rasmussen aimed to exalt in her work,
captured why it might not be so simple for everyone.
Rasmussen pointed to several works to help develop her position including Harbeck
(1992), Sears and Williams (1997), and Bridgewater (1997) to emphasize the positive and near-
healing qualities that coming out had for both the gay individual, those they came in contact with
in the classroom. To demonstrate this immediacy of disclosing and discussing one’s sexuality,
Rasmussen noted through those previously referred works that coming out was something that
should/must be done to combat prejudice. It was construed as a chief means to progress for
LGBT individuals and even more so in the classroom, and those who did not were reduced to
62
cowardice (2008). She used this logic to illuminate this narrative of value and valor that was
tethered to coming out.
Countering the notion of inherent or developed strength with coming out, Rasmussen
asserted a number of challenges with this process. The valorization of coming out, as Rasmussen
characterized it, was placed in a vacuum that removed the oxygen of race, socioeconomics,
religion, age, and family. In such a lens, there was no consideration for, perhaps, the loss of
financial stability when a young person might be reliant on family funds to survive or continue
school. There was no consideration for the ostracization from one’s deeply held religion or ties to
one’s community that had not grown to accept those of the LGBT community. Rasmussen
pointed to works by Snider (1996) to illuminate the problem did not lie within the individual, but
within the dominant discourse of celebrating the act of coming out. While one’s choice might be
courageous in its own right, charging others with the same expectation and imminence was both
“unrealistic” and not often preferred. Most pressing was the fact that other identities or
belonginess to other cultural groups might counter the necessity of coming out. Quite simply, the
politics of coming out, outweighed the need to disclose and was not an abdication of
responsibility or a harbinger of shame as Sears and Williams (1997) noted in their work. As
Rasmussen stated, “When coming out discourses are privileged, the act of not coming out may
be read as an abdication of responsibility, or, the act of somebody who is disempowered or
somehow ashamed of their inherent gayness” (2004, p. 146). Rasmussen pointed to a black,
lesbian woman, who refused to come out to demonstrate her point. Being black, Jamaican, and
Christian, staying in the closet was not an elected choice, but one that she had to make. The
woman noted that the most immediate thing people saw when they looked at her was her skin
color, and not her desires for women. In her words, she was first and foremost a black woman
63
who was engrained in her Christian community. Coming out would compromise her
connectedness to those who made her feel whole. It was an unworthy sacrifice just to celebrate
her sexuality. The discrimination she faced as a black woman was beyond her control, but there
was more “agency in trying to control” the disclosure of her sexual identity (Rasmussen, 2004).
In sum, one’s decision to come out was predicated upon a rumination of his/her/their existence in
spaces of religion, family, his/her/their economic position or stability, or relative stage of life.
Addressing the issue of coming out the context of the K-12 classroom, Rasmussen noted
that the “construction of divisions between public and private spheres must constantly be
renegotiated by teachers and students who are not heterosexual identified” (2004, p. 147). She
suggested that there were two key challenges here. One was the fact that while authentic voices
and the fostering of authentic identity was encouraged, that authenticity was fleeting as identity
was changed over time. Additionally, authenticity here was a matter of what was shared, thus
self-constitutive. It challenged the very notion that coming out really meant one could exist in a
true authentic self in the classroom. There was solace, however, in the fact that that mere
expression intermingling with relationships with students worked to dismantle taboos about
homosexuality and what was “pedagogically appropriate in educational spaces…” (Rasmussen,
2004, p. 148). The second challenge was that idea that coming out in a “single declarative
statement may be pedagogically unsound,” as Rasmussen pointed to Khayatt (1999) for guidance
(2004). The argument here was that declaring one’s sexuality in the position of one who taught,
forced that individual to become the representative for the entire community. Khayatt questioned
whether there was pedagogical value considering the transient nature of identity and the
representation that teacher would be thrust into providing? The core of Rasmussen’s theorizing
here in response to Khayatt was that coming out could be expressed in multiple ways without
64
using speech, through visual expressions, curricular choices, and were even read by the students
on their own (2004). Generally, the complexities that surrounded coming out, as Rasmussen
suggested, were find tuned to the preferences of the person coming out, and was complicated by
the race, age, family background, time, place, and space in which that individual was located.
Acknowledging the complex discourse on coming out, Rasmussen noted, was a means to move
away from focusing on that immediacy of “how, when and if teachers should come out in the
classroom (2004, p. 149). While she did not call for an end to the act of coming out, she
impressed upon others to see there was value of taking more complex examinations of how
“coming out and the closet are constructed via moral, political, and pedagogical considerations”
and how they were related to the production of sexual identities (2004, p. 149).
Ferfolja and Hopkins (2013) extended the study of workplace challenges of those who
were in the queer community by conducting their own mixed methods study based in Australia.
Ferfolja and Hopkins expounded upon micro-cultures in school settings and systemic practices
that affected gay and lesbian teachers’ lives in the workplace and highlighted how they
negotiated “complex discursive fields in schools to perform their ‘professional’ teacher
subjectivities” that are simultaneously acceptable in the organization and personally effective in
a hostile environment (2013, p. 311).
8
Ferfolja and Hopkins suggested that as school settings had acted to be more hospitable to
gay teachers, they still acted in a manner that reinforced narrow understandings of gender and
sexuality as they regulated curriculum, pedagogy, practice, and policy as functions of
8
Even though the study was conducted outside of the Unite States, it is still important to include as it gives credence
to the circumstances and stigma that sexually diverse people face. It shows an international intersection of the issues
across regions. It is especially important considering Australia includes sexual orientation in their anti-
discrimination laws, and still has problems in this domain. This is a fact that supports a claim made by Beatty and
Kirby (2006), that legislation does not eliminate the social stigma, and thus, is not a simple solution to a greater
problem.
65
compulsory practice of heterosexuality. The authors argued that teachers were surveilled,
discriminated against, and marginalized by way of actors in their institutions, and this compelled
many gay teachers to hide their sexuality for fear of further subjugation. These included
termination, rejections, and limitations being place on career options (Ferfolja & Hopkins, 2013).
They further argued that this was aligned with the oppressive history gays had endured and was
relative to the discourses that maligned the perception of homosexuality with accusations of
promiscuity, mental illness, disease, hypersexuality and pedophilia. The myths that prevailed
permeate among school grounds in hostile communities, forcing queer teachers to be hyper-
vigilant in proving their “normality” (Ferfolja & Hopkins, 2013, p. 312).
In their study, Ferfolja and Hopkins used a mixed methods approach with 14 teachers
who self-identified as gay or lesbian. Eight were male and six were female. Eight of the group
were teachers with 5 years or fewer experience, two were mid-career teachers, and the remaining
four had 25 years of more in the classroom (Ferfolja & Hopkins, 2013). They used semi-
structured qualitative interviews which lasted up to 120 minutes, focus group meetings, and
analyzed documents for their data collection, with interviews being the primary source of data.
Interviews were recorded and transcribed, and with other collected data, were sorted into themes.
The participants revealed that among the micro-cultures of the various schools where
they worked was limited systemic support or visibility of sexual diversity. How a school was
managed regarding socio-cultural differences, the degree of hostility toward homosexuality
varied. In some cases where schools were under the purview of religious organizations, those
teachers could face legal discrimination because religious institutions were exempt from anti-
discrimination laws. Schools with greater support for socio-cultural differences did not support
any discrimination and were more supportive of sexual diversity. This was very reliant on
66
geographical location. Schools in a socially diverse area tended to be more liberal and tolerant in
general (Ferfolja & Hopkins, 2013). The authors remarked that this was likely due to efforts
made by administrators to create a school culture that valued difference, thereby making it easier
to be gay or lesbian. Whereas in other areas “the dearth of cultural diversity resulted in a lack of
interest in, and direct hostility towards any kind of difference,” resulting in the disregard of
harassment perpetrated by the students (Ferfolja & Hopkins, 2013, p. 315). One administrator
was noted as saying in response to one instance, “Oh, we don’t know where this is coming from
because we don’t have kids like that here” (Ferfolja & Hopkins, 2013, p. 315). This was
highlighted as a lack of engagement with socio-political culture in addition to a failure to
understand the complex, covert, and passive ways discrimination occurred.
All the participants reported having a few colleagues in the workplace as allies and were
deemed critical in establishing a positive and supportive work environment, as these colleagues
treated them with respect. Ferfolja and Hopkins attributed gratitude for being treated kindly to an
expectation of the opposite after a history of witnessing or experiencing harassment or
discrimination. Nick, who was a primary school teacher, noted “I only really came out early in
2010....It was mid-2009 when I came out to myself, so when I arrived at this school, I was kind
of just happy not to be called a fag” (Ferfolja & Hopkins, 2013, p. 317). Having respectful and
tolerant colleagues identified as an indicator of a positive school culture, but some teachers still
reported instances of discrimination, alienation and/or prejudice in schools they determined were
welcoming. Jeremy spoke of his exclusion from international trip for work with students. He
described that his colleague conducted a risk analysis for his participation after he expressed his
interest. It was concluded that because he was single and not married, and as he surmised, most
likely he was gay attending an overnight trip with children, harkening back to tropes of
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pedophilia and hypersexuality (Ferfolja & Hopkins, 2013). In addition to being excluded by his
colleagues, he was also restricted from a privilege that Ferfolja and Hopkins noted, gave teachers
a path to enhance their professional relationships with students, barring Jeremy a chance to
improve his work performance. It is evident that he missed this opportunity that others received
due to his sexuality (Ferfolja & Hopkins, 2013).
The data also presented the idea that having more gay and/or lesbian colleagues had the
potential to create a more supportive work experience. Several participants commented that
having others like them made it easier to be out and to be more comfortable in a general sense. It
was enabling of a visibility and a camaraderie that was not previously enjoyed and signaled that
the school environment was more tolerant of sexual difference.
Self-governance and hyperawareness of one’s behavior and perception was a recurring
theme as well. A number of participants noted fear of being seen as unprofessional by sharing
their private lives at work, forcing them to “play-down” their identities and conform to those set
by dominant organizational discourses (Ferfolja & Hopkins, 2013, p. 319). The authors
constructed this idea as a function of a new homonormativity, a concept that allowed gay and
lesbian teachers to succeed professionally as long as they “enact a narrowly circumscribed and
conventional performance of gender, family, and politics in the workplace” (Ferfolja & Hopkins,
2013, p. 320). As the authors suggested, homosexuality was both subjected to critical gaze in
addition to compulsory silence. Participant Natalie indicated she decided to suppress her displays
of being out to better her chances to get promoted, what Ferfolja and Hopkins noted was
indicative of school cultures produced and regulated desired identities (2013).
In keeping with this idea of regulating desired identities, Russ et al. (2002) examined the
possible impacts of disclosing one’s sexuality to teacher credibility and perceived student
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learning. To contextualize the study and informed their research questions, Russ et al. cited
numerous works that focused on minoritized populations, including women and people of color,
to demonstrate the existence of diminished positive perceptions of credibility due to prejudice
from race and sexism. This was connected to anti-gay bias as an extended line of reason, that
with an established negative perception of minoritized populations, LGBT must be included.
Russ et al. (2002) noted that prior to their study, there was no research that focused on the effects
of coming out in the professional sphere, serving as the basis for the study. As a logical
connection, Russ et al. (2002) explored the functioned of instructor evaluations. Since they were
used to evaluate effectiveness, which had implications for salary, retention, etc., it stood to
reason that a instructor’s identity including his sexual orientation, if known, could have a
negative impact on one’s career, considering bias for whatever reason can be a factor for student-
evaluation of one’s performance. To support this, Russ et al. cited Centra and Gaubatz (2000, p.
312), “Given the widespread use of student evaluations of teaching for tenure and promotion
decisions, it is important to be aware of possible biases in the evaluations.” To extend this, Russ
et al. included the concepts character and competence as co-parts of credibility. Citing
McCroskey and Dunham (1966), “Instructors who seem knowledgeable on the material are
likely to be perceived as credible, convincing, and influential” (p. 313). Russ et al. argued that
with credibility being a function of belief, one would simply need to hold negative beliefs of
one’s sexuality, for instance, to have his evaluation conducted through a lens that had the
potential to affect judgement here, no matter the true performance, quality of instruction, or
delivery methods.
The quasi-experimental study used a sample population of 154, first-year undergraduate
students, with 60 males, and 94 females, dispersed among eight sections of the same
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communications course at a large, Midwestern university. The average age of the sample was
18.45 with a range of 18-20. Ethnic representation consisted of 91.6% Caucasian, 5.2% African
American, 1.9% Latino, 1.3% Asian/Pacific Islander. 98.1% identified as heterosexual, 1.3%
identified as gay, and 1.3% identified as bisexual. The communications course was purposefully
chosen. It was a required course for all first-year students, and would represent a cross-section of
all academic disciplines. Additionally, the sections were conveniently chosen, as all would meet
on the same day.
The participants gave their responses on a 10-point semantic differential point scale, in
addition to a choice of 12 pairs of adjectives to describe the instructor. For competence, the
choices were intelligent/unintelligent, valuable/worthless, expert/inexpert, reliable/unreliable,
informed/uninformed, qualified/unqualified. For character, the choices were pleasant/unpleasant,
unselfish/selfish, nice/awful, virtuous/sinful, honest/dishonest, friendly/unfriendly. Secondly, the
respondents used a 10-point scale to answer the following question, “How much have you
learned from this speaker’s lecture?” Choices range from 0 = Nothing, to 10 = Learned a great
deal. Lastly, the authors used posed four open-ended questions for qualitative analysis, and to
generate original responses rather than rely on the respondents’ answers on the survey. As stated,
the open-ended questions were likely to produce a realistic and valid “picture of respondents’
beliefs, attitudes, and experiences” (Russ et al., 2002, p. 315).
Russ et al. hypothesized the following: students would rate a gay instructor lower in
competence and character than a straight instructor. The authors argued that because sexuality
was regarded by many to be a morality issue, and credibility was subjective, it was reasonable
that students’ anti-gay predispositions would affect their evaluation of an instructor’s character
and competence. To evaluate this, Russ et al., included “(R1) students will rate a gay instructor
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lower in competence and character than a straight instructor,” as a research question.
Additionally, “(R2) what is the relationship between teacher credibility and perceived student
learning?” Lastly, “(R3) will students perceive they learn more from a straight instructor versus a
gay instructor?” (p. 313).
For the experiment, the authors developed a scripted lecture to be delivered to students in
an introductory communications course. A 25-year-old guest lecturer would use the script in
eight different classes. The guest lecturer was an experienced public speaker and educator and
“skilled at naturally performing on-cue and presenting rehearsed material in an un-rehearsed
manner” (p. 314). In the script he was introduced as a graduate student in the department, and
was a nationally ranked collegiate public speaker, to establish credibility. In each rendition of the
speech, the sexuality of the speaker casually referenced the name of his partner, Jennifer or
Jason, anecdotally. When the lecture ended, students were made to evaluate the speaker with a
form. To measure consistency of the performance, to independent volunteers who were blind to
the study, reviewed recordings of the performances. Additionally, the professors who
participated in the study also reviewed the performances. Both found no inconsistencies that
might have changed the results.
All quantitative data was analyzed with t-tests with significance for all statistical tests set
a p < .05. The qualitative data was coded into responses that were critical of the instructor, and
those that were positive. As indicated above, the first hypothesis posited that a gay teacher would
be deemed less credible that a straight teacher. The data showed that sexual orientation was
statistically significant. The gay instructor was found to be significantly less credible in terms of
competence and character. In answering R1, students will rate a gay instructor lower in
competence and character than a straight instructor, no statistically significant difference was
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found. R2 explore the relationship between credibility and learning. The data reveled a
significant positive relationship between the two. R3 asked if students perceived they learned
more from a heterosexual teacher compared to a gay teacher. The data showed they believed they
learned significantly more from the straight instructor. In the qualitative data, the feedback for
both the straight and gay versions of the instructor were about the same, with the students
remarking on his great speaking skills, how well he was informed, and that he was charismatic.
However, the number of positive comments skewed toward the straight instructor. In the
negative, the straight teacher only received 39 critical responses compared to 205 for the gay
teacher. Many responded negatively to the topic the gay teacher discussed: cultural influence.
The data noted several comments alluded to a perceived agenda to benefit in the gay teacher and
felt guilty for not agreeing with him as well. The delivery of the instruction of the gay teacher
was also reviewed negatively, with comments critical of his hand gestures, and his “grating”
voice. As Russ et al. anticipated, the straight teacher received only positive comments. The final
question asked if respondents would hire the instructor. Ninety-three percent responded
favorably to the straight instructor with “unquestionable,” while only 30% said they “might” hire
the gay teacher, citing relatability or caution of the instructor teaching that particular topic.
In their discussion, Russ et al. questioned whether a single trait could be used to
determine a teacher’s effectiveness. They argued that the resulting perceived lack of credibility
was a cognitive response in which those who deemed the teacher to have diminished credibility
created false psychological distance due to a reliance on stereotypes being ascribed to gayness.
They continued, “students stop perceiving the gay teacher as credible and start disconnecting
themselves in order to feel ‘safe’ and cognitively comfortable” (Russ et al., 2002, p. 318). The
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authors cited students’ comments acknowledging fear of sexual advances on the part of the
instructor and discomfort with their sexuality to support that assertion.
Russ et al. (2002) acknowledged that the findings from this study suggested that coming
out, or in their words, “professional disclosure” should be contraindicated as it had been found
here to be disadvantageous. Regardless of the findings, Russ et al. spoke to the benefits of
professional disclosure outweighing the potential negative feedback, citing enhanced rapport
with students, and improved opportunities to build trust and honesty with students. They
additionally argued that disclosure “creates a positive atmosphere, unifies the group, and
validates diversity” (Russ et al., 2002, p. 321). This suggested that the benefit of coming out
rested in the potential improvement of student-teacher relationships and possessed a transcendent
pedagogical value.
Mayo (2009) examined the relationships between gay teachers and their students, and gay
teachers and their colleagues. This study emerged from past works noting that some gay teachers
would not advocate for their gay and questioning (meaning possibly gay) students out of fear of
putting their own jobs at risks, particularly in places where sexuality was not protected in anti-
discrimination laws. The study revealed that gay teachers supported their gay students and
responded to their needs in several ways unique to the individual regardless of level of hostility
present in one’s work environment, ranging from keeping a watchful eye, to revealing their own
sexuality and becoming mentors.
Mayo (2009) noted that other works on this topic observed that many gay teachers
suffered strained relationships due to fear of exposure of their sexuality, resulting in an
uncomfortable silence. This led to teachers being distant and experiencing deep anxiety about
students asking about their personal lives. The fear and caution they navigated persisted as they
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were aware that some students were known or assumed to be gay, thus at-risk of unnamed
dangers. While there was a need to help in some way, most were unwilling to do anything for
fear, and without legal protections, it only exacerbated feelings of powerlessness and futility.
Mayo highlighted that this fear prevented gay teachers from serving as positive role models to
assist in breaking the stigma of being gay and empower those students who were struggling with
coming to terms with their sexuality. Part of mitigating that stigma, Mayo suggested, rested in
engaging in conversations and sharing with potentially or out gay students the challenging life
experiences gay teachers had endured.
Mayo’s study was qualitative, using interview data to generate his findings. He chose a
school district in Florida that was known to be hostile to homosexuality. Given the uneasiness
with gay issues, Mayo used network sampling to find seven teachers to participate as long as
their names were changed, and their school sites were never mentioned. Each participant sat for
an hour-long interview in his own home. Each of them was male and between the ages of 26 and
54, were secondary school teachers, and with the exception of one, were either “closeted or
‘passing
9
’ at school, or was ‘implicitly out’ because they were sure that some faculty and
students assumed they were gay” (Mayo, 2009, p. 3). Four of the participants were white, and the
other three were Latino, and each of them reported to live in middle class suburban
neighborhoods. The participants’ interview data was recorded, transcribed, and sorted into
categories. Each of them had the opportunity to read the transcripts and clarify their words, if
needed, which Mayo noted helped to decrease incidences of bias.
Mayo reported that each of the teachers were passionate about their interactions with
students they perceived as either gay or questions, and sometimes their encounters resulted in a
9
Mayo uses the term “passing” to suggest there was no ambiguity with the participant’s sexuality and was assumed
to be heterosexual.
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student revealing their sexual orientation to the teacher. All of them made effort to show they
cared and understood with their own methods. These included a cautionary word or advice, to a
protective eye from afar (Mayo, 2009). One participant, Chris, suggested his school should
create some gay-friendly safe space to help the students who were observed to be struggling
and/or confused, but the idea was rejected by school administrators. This developed into students
coming to Chris and like teachers privately. When students officially came out, the teachers
reportedly became more concerned and more careful with them. In those scenarios, some
participants chose to give advice to students, and noticed that, with their support, certain students
began openly expressing their identities (Mayo, 2009). Gary noted that one student told his
girlfriends he was gay and observed that the student was becoming a little too flamboyant and
comfortable, to the point that other students did not know how to treat him. Gary was concerned
that the student was pressuring the others to accept him the way he was to a point that he would
be ostracized, not because of the expressions of his identity, but because of his behavior while
expressing himself. He reportedly did not want the student to be naïve in thinking that everyone
would accept him for who he was (Mayo, 2009). Other participants shared similar stories of care.
Donald and Ben exhibited more caution when interacting with student who revealed their
sexual identity. While Donald was an undergraduate University of Pittsburgh, he had to observe
teachers as part of his preservice training. A student came out to him. Feeling unexperienced he
referred him to a guidance counselor. Later, the student asked him via email if he was gay, and
Donald prolonged the timing of his response out of fear the student was attracted to him
romantically. He was first fearful the exchange happened in his school email, which was
potentially viewable by applicable administrators, and second because he did not want the
student to think he viewed him in any other way than as a student (Mayo, 2009). Mayo noted that
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this was not a demonstration in a lack of care, but “an appropriately high level of prudence given
his age, the student’s age, and their common designation as college student” (p. 5).
Ben did not think he had any duty to help students who were questioning their sexuality.
He believed that since the conversation around sexuality conjured up sex, that it was
inappropriate for him to engage, and would treat as if a student had reported abuse (Mayo, 2009).
He believed that there should be a protocol that should be followed in this type of situation and
that it was beyond his purview to get involved, at least in his professional setting. Essentially,
Donald’s and Ben’s stories indicated that each individual situation elicited different responses
when students expressed their sexual orientation, directly or indirectly (Mayo, 2009). Their
actions also varied depending on the location and/or setting where a student revealed his/her
orientation “highlighting the complex nature of their interaction” (Mayo, 2009, p. 6). None of the
teachers reported that they sat idly by while a student suffered. They invoked a range of
responses deemed appropriate, from getting directly involved by giving advice to following strict
school protocols.
All the participants were out to colleagues to some varying degree, meaning only a select
few were privy to their sexual identity, or the entire faculty was either fully informed or curious
(Mayo, 2009). Nevertheless, cordial yet guarded relationships with their colleagues, combined
with discretion and professionalism was the norm. Some reported being close to specific
members of the faculty, and others were reported instances where coworkers were not so
friendly. Gary was called anti-social as he retreated from certain female coworkers who were
intrigued with his sexuality. They pried with sexually explicit conversation to try to entice Gary
into revealing something, but to no avail, they retreated. Gary experienced an antagonistic
relationship with faculty and staff as rumors and conversations about him persisted (Mayo,
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2009). Adam did not experience the same hostility some of the others experienced but mostly
because he did not socialize with them. In his view, colleagues were simply that, colleagues not
friends. He did not trust them and certainly was not comfortable sharing personal information
with them.
Mayo illustrated, regarding interactions between gay teachers and faculty members, that
the onus was on the school administration to create environments that promoted healthy and
amicable interactions among them all. This ultimately affected the quality of learning
specifically that gay teachers could provide as the “energy consumed by the daily negotiations
described in this study can be immense and potentially inhibits [their] primary roles at school”
(Mayo, 2009, p. 9).
From the above discussion, it is clear that there are several inhibiting factors regarding
coming out in the context of a school environment. Threats to credibility, discordance with
heteropatriarchal and community norms, and support on behalf of administrators and faculty are
among the challenges black gay teachers must navigate in deciding to disclose their sexual
identity. Within this is the understanding that these men are seen as black men first, and their
presence is met with a number of expectations and beliefs for how they are supposed to present
themselves, behave, perform, etc. How they experience the school culture is further complicated
being gay men, as they must contend with, potentially, prejudices and preconceived ideas of who
they are as black men and additional hostilities towards homosexuality. This ultimately affects
the extent to which they enabled to revealing parts of who they are, including disclosing their
sexual identity, through radical honesty. The concepts contained in this review will be integrated
into my conceptual framework.
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Conceptual Framework
In this section I present the conceptual framework that guided the sampling, development
of instruments, data collection, and analysis for this study. Maxwell (2013) explained that a
conceptual framework is a system of concepts, beliefs, expectations, assumptions, and theories
that both informs and supports a study. It is presented in a written or visual form that contains a
tentative theory for the circumstances that produce the phenomenon one is seeking to understand
(Maxwell, 2013). I used existing theoretical and empirical literature in tandem with thought
experiments and experiential knowledge, drawing upon my own experiences to argue that black
gay teachers engage in cyclical navigation of the disclosure of their sexuality in the classroom, in
which they undergo a repeated mental processing of the factors that enable their outness. I
hypothesized their identity, informed by their religious background and personal experiences
with homosexuality and racism, among other factors, interacted with the culture of their school
resulting in a choice to disclose their sexuality in the classroom environment. How open they
decided to be is represented on a continuum. As such, I theorized that that choice was one of a
range of choices from completely closeted to out, and the consideration of that choice was
indefinite and infinitely modifiable with changes in time, one’s environment, and identity
growth, as shown in Figure 1.
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Figure 1
Conceptual Framework
In the following sections I explain each element of the framework, starting with identity,
moving to school culture, and then addressing the outness continuum.
Identity
First, I argued that any decision to come out of the closest is connected to one’s outlook
on his gay identity and how well it has been integrated into his self-concept. One would first
have to experience the steps listed in Cass’s (1979) model for gay identity integration:
(a) a general sense of feeling different; (b) an awareness of same-sex feelings; (c) a point
of crisis in which an individual realizes that his or her feelings can be labeled as
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homosexual; and (d) an eventual acceptance and integration of one’s gay identity. (as
cited in Loiacano, 1989, p. 21)
Based on the literature, I asserted that this process of integrating homosexuality into a
black man’s identity was more convoluted than what Cass presented, for it was wrought with a
number of unique challenges compared to the experiences of white gay male Americans (Bajali
et al., 2012; DeJean, 2008; Hill, 2013; Loiacano, 1989; Woodson & Pabon, 2016). I expected
that black men would have had to resolve conflicts that existed between their religious beliefs,
connections to their culture, and their sexuality in order to integrate homosexuality into their
identity. Bajali et al. (2012) noted that gayness is frequently at odds with the black community,
which is firmly grounded in Christianity. The book of Leviticus verse 20:13 of the New
Testament says, “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of
them have committed a detestable act.” Verse 18:22 of the same book calls the same act an
abomination. Given these passages are interpreted to disavow homosexuality, I argued that
integrating a black gay identity into one’s own understanding of the social practice of
Christianity in a given community presented a complex and personal set of decisions to come to
terms with one’s sexuality, being that gayness was incongruous to one’s religious
community. As Bajali et al. (2012) illustrated, many would prefer to belong to their respective
communities than to embrace their sexuality. This in turn tended to create a mindset that rejected
gayness as part of one’s expressed identity, or forced one to adopt behaviors like role-flexing,
which masked one’s homosexuality with recognition that one’s whole being was not accepted. It
was as Hill (2013) remarked, that black gay men “are all too often situated in the ‘rock’ between
choosing one identity over the other, and the ‘hard’ place of declaring an implied allegiance and
rejection of a part of oneself” (p. 210).
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I further argued that, with pervasive homophobia in the black community, accepting
one’s gay identity would have also been complicated. As Woodson and Pabon (2016) wrote,
Successful expressions of Black masculinity are those that closely approximate
“dominant social norms,” including the “white normality-Black deviancy framework that
accompanies racism … the heterosexual-homosexual binary that supports heterosexism
… and a class system that grants propertied individuals more power and status than those
who lack it.” (McCready, 2009, as cited in Woodson & Pabon, p. 60)
This suggested that homosexuality and stereotypical hallmarks thereof, including femininity and
same-sex feelings and/or relationships, countered what constituted a normal or successful black
man. In a heteropatriarchal system, a black gay man would be rebuked, and develop as Hill
(2013) argued, internalized homophobia, forcing one to suppress feelings for the same-sex, and
struggled with one’s self-concept as one had become something he had been conditioned to
dislike. This was further perpetuated by gayness historically being seen as a white phenomenon
within the black community. Loiacano (1989) reported that gayness was irrelevant to the black
community’s interests, thus inhibiting the limited support it already received. This made gayness
an identity that was foreign to the community, something to be rejected and/or marginalized,
something that a black man simply could not be (Loiacano, 1989). With the addition of rampant
racism in the larger and predominantly white gay community, black gay men were frequently
estranged from a community that should be supportive of their identity (Hill, 2013). I argued that
this dual marginalization, further placed homosexuality at odds with a possible black gay
identity, increasing the challenge of integrating it into one’s identity.
In the process of integrating black and gay identities, I further argued that many black
gay men would have suffered a lack of support, in the form of familial support and positive
81
representation. Many of the participants in Bajali et al.’s (2012) study reported either witnessing
or experiencing ostracization and physical removal from their familial household after the
exposure of a family member’s or their own sexuality. With this as a potential consequence, I
argued that this target population would have experienced the anxiety and fear that came with the
cognizance of the importance of keeping one’s sexuality hidden, or repressed altogether, further
complicating their ability to integrate homosexuality into their identity. I expected that many
would not have had black gay role models or positive gay images to reinforce accepting their
gayness. Data from Loiacano (1989) revealed that a lack of role models gave participants a
perception that successful gayness (i.e., long-term relationships and free expression) was non-
existent, making it apparent that being gay would be less that fruitful. That lack of representation
perpetuated the idea that to be gay was to be invisible and unloved, and avoiding that fate meant
walking the path of heterosexuality, further suppressing one’s gayness. I expected to find some
effect of the sentiments described above present in the men I sought to understand.
With the above statements, I argued that after the conditions presented in the literature for
black gay identity integration that one would emerge with a general decision of his level of
outness. If one was equipped with a positive gay identity akin to DeJean (2008), one could
embrace the idea of being out, both publicly and professionally. Otherwise, he would remain
closeted in some manner. Given that a positive gay identity was something to be achieved, its
place in time was relative, meaning in combination with other factors, it could become associated
with one’s self-concept at some point in his life. Jackson (2006) reported a number of the
individuals studied typically came out as they aged, citing personal growth with respect to being
honest with themselves, a reduced need for external validation, and a detachment to the
judgement they garnered from others. Jackson further stated personality was a large determinant
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of action, dictating individual responses to their environment, and how they might confront the
notion of being out in the spaces they occupied. Age, personal growth, and personality were
factors in what Jackson described as a necessary level of comfort for grappling with not only
acceptance of one’s gay identity, but also the willingness to defend it when necessary (2006).
This suggested a variable response in the timing of coming out as one aged and developed over
time, making his place on the outness continuum fluid. I further argued that his prior choice of
outness would affect how the interactions of school culture would factor into his decisions to
come out professionally.
School Culture
I also argued that school culture was a major determinant of the level of outness one may
have believed he was enabled to display in the school environment.
10
Several works have
pointed to the nature of one’s school being a catalyst for teacher agency in their behaviors, such
as the flexibility in curricular choices, collaboration among teachers, and the practice of radical
honesty. DeJean (2008) detailed radical honesty as a practice where teachers were able to display
a level authenticity according to their own truths, including enacting curricular choices that
challenged a system that “fears the personal and seeks safety in the technical, the distant, and the
abstract (2008, p. 37). I suspected that black gay teachers who disclosed their sexuality and were
comfortable practicing radical honesty felt supported by their school culture. I further argued that
the agency to perform in this manner was predicated upon a number of catalytic factors. First
was geographical location. DeJean (2008) argued that a school’s regional location dictated the
10
I specifically focused on school culture as a singular determinant of outness. While I acknowledge that other
factors might affect outness that were externally related to school, such as a general community, I expected that one
might have already determined a level of outness regardless of the school culture. As the literature noted, school
culture has mutable effects in this regard, therefore it was the feature being more conducive to answering the
research question.
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nature of the school’s social environment. As such, a school with a lack of diversity might not
have prioritized issues that stemmed from a lack thereof. In the case of a gay teacher, the
school’s embracing of the open practice of one’s sexuality might not have been realistic as it had
been suggested in the literature that diversity was foreign, displays of difference were peculiar
and frequently challenged (DeJean, 2008). From this I argued that a school located in a
geographical area where homosexuality was commonplace, more comfort would be engendered
for black gay teachers to disclose their identity. I asserted, however, that this was largely
predicated on the degree to which racism was experienced in the school environment. For black
teachers, gay or not, racism was always a factor in efforts to authentically display one’s identity
and participate in radical honesty, and not meeting one’s expectation of their perception of what
a black person was supposed to be has been shown to cause conflict in the school environment
(Hill, 2013; Woodson & Pabon, 2016). It was evident that there was a constant pressure to fit
oneself into the heteropatriarchal norm of what a good black person was supposed to be and that
incongruence resulted in a rejection of the identity that was on display for sake of what it was
supposed to be in the beholder’s view (Woodson & Pabon, 2016). Even amongst black students,
black teachers were still met with this expectation embody the stereotypical and area-typical
markers of what a black man was expected to be (Woodson & Pabon, 2016). I argued that being
black and gay in this situation maked this marginalization two-fold in a predominantly white
environment. The play of racism and sexual identity in a homosexual-averse area created hostile
spaces, forcing one to either choose to fit the expected mold, create a persona that matched it, or
simply move on to a new school. (Woodson & Pabon, 2016). I argued that this created a unique
experience of marginalization for black gay teachers as their whole identity could be at odds with
what their environment sees.
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I additionally argued that one’s classroom context contributed in some ways to one’s
comfort in disclosing their sexuality. As evinced by Jackson (2006), classroom subject and grade
level affected one’s choices to come out. Subjects that engaged in discussions of human
circumstances, like in Social Studies, increased the likelihood of disclosure (Jackson, 2006).
Moreover, depending on the grade level and age of the students, instances of one’s sexuality
varied, with disclosure being more common with older students (Jackson, 2006). With these
factors, I expected a variance in the experiences of the men I studied, and for them to provide
additional insights for the decisions that were involved in choosing their level of disclosure
unique to their classroom contexts.
Chief among my argument for school culture dictating one’s disclosure of sexual identity
and the extent to which the previously described variables were present in a school environment
was largely dependent upon a school’s leadership. A school’s administration has been shown to
create spaces for diversity in their school, attributing that development to their own policy
implementations and leadership (Ferfolja & Hopkins, 2013; Mayo, 2009). Depending on how
much they prioritized diversity in their school and cultivated it within the confines of their
purview (e.g., school policies, hiring choices, etc.), a commensurate amount of agency was
fostered in their school’s culture, strongly affecting one’s participation in radical honesty
(DeJean, 2008). While administrators’ hiring practices were predicated upon the pool of
applicants, their choices of hiring gay teachers and people of various ethnic backgrounds would
have strong implications for the value of diversity in a school (Ferfolja & Hopkins, 2013;
Jackson, 2006). Increased diversity ushered in changes in classroom norms and boosted comfort
for gay teachers, enabling their agency in radical honesty, which in turn was enabling of
movement along the axis of the outness continuum (Ferfolja & Hopkins, 2013).
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Outness Continuum
I argued that one’s choice to come out was expressed on a spectrum of choices that were
continuously renegotiated based on the development one’s identity, and in the context of a
professional school environment, the interactions of identity and their school’s culture. The basis
of that argument was rooted in the idea of an outness continuum, which countered the notion of
coming out as a simple, perennial stamp marking the permanent decision of a dichotomy: in or
out (Jackson, 2006). The choice to come out was one that was constantly made and differed upon
a range of factors, from the people one was associating with, to the context one was positioned
in. Displays of outness might be tempered to prevent discussions or criticism or hostility in an
environment opposed to homosexuality (Bajali et al., 2012). Inversely, one’s outness might be
augmented by comfort with fears assuaged by being among peers, being in private with a lover,
or being in environments that tolerate, encourage, or celebrate being gay (Ferfolja & Hopkins,
2013; Jackson, 2006). This was even further complicated by one’s refusal to conform and modify
his behaviors given his surroundings or due to one’s personality, sense of confidence, etc.
(Jackson, 2006). In either case, a decision was made for one to be on some level of outness. The
range of choices were expressed in Figure 1. Beginning at the far left of the spectrum,
completely closeted was constituted by having no one being informed of one’s sexuality,
applicable to the given context. In this case, an individual’s sexual identity could be a secret that
was only known to him, or he could be out in personal spaces, but in others like a workplace for
example, his sexual identity was unknown. Moving forward on the spectrum lead to private. At
this level, very few people might know of one’s sexuality. This was most likely close friends or
simply with those engaged in intimate or romantic relationships. Selectively open suggested one
was comfortable with people having knowledge of their sexual identity and might even engage in
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displaying feelings or sharing experiences of their same-sex relationships, but only with people
or in situations of their choosing, with criteria being subjective to the individual. On the verge
referred to a frame of mind that one was generally comfortable being seen as gay but had not yet
made any formal declarations of coming out. It must be said as well that, according to
Rasmussen (2004) coming out was not always a verbalization of the words “I’m gay” but also
include actions, indications, and expressions that were either implicitly and/or explicitly
pronouncing a same-sex identity, analogous to DeJean’s (2008) concept of radical honesty.
Being on the verge indicated that one was comfortable displaying their identity in various
settings but had not confirmed in a manner that was aligned with public acknowledgment,
whereas being out does. Out meant that one had in some manner confirmed and expressed
willingly indicators of their sexual identity in the space they occupied at present.
As Figure 1 suggests, I argued that placement on this spectrum was not fixed.
Approximate positioning on the spectrum was modified by changes in time. This argument was
consistent with the findings from Jackson’s (2006) study which suggested that as one ages,
changes in mindset in might occur, potentially altering one’s regard for factors upon which they
based his current level of outness. Additionally, over time the context upon which his decision
was made may change. This would further suggest that changes in one’s identity changed, so
would their perspective on their identity. This was critical, for as I argued above, a decision was
first made in one’s personal life regarding their level of outness, and decisions to come out as
teachers would be predicated upon that foundational choice.
I further argued that for teachers, this consideration was a permanent cycle with every
school year resulting in an impermanent decision. As Ferfolja and Hopkins (2013) found in their
study, gay teachers’ decisions to come out changed as school administrators came and left.
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Depending on their policies and support for sexual difference, agency of gay teachers was
influenced. Moreover, increased representation of sexual identity altered comfort levels as well
just by having more or fewer gay individuals in the environment, quite similar to one being
amongst others of the same sexual identity in other contexts and settings (Ferfolja & Hopkins,
2013). New groups of students and new co-workers also reignited the weighing the choice to
come out as the environment had now changed. As such, I expected that the men I studied would
reveal changes in their perspective over time or indicate future possibilities with their disclosure
based on changeable factors in their environments and their identities.
Conclusion
In my conceptual framework, I argued that one’s identity and school culture dictated the
degree to which he would express/reveal his sexual identity in a school environment. The
consideration of which was permanently cyclical for black gay teachers as the factors described
in that decision were infinitely applicable and modifiable as they constantly occurred, interacted,
and developed over time. As one’s identity modified, so did his interactions with a school’s
culture, resulting in a decision for the level of outness he would display. When factors within the
current school culture changed, there was a return to the considerations that determined one’s
continued position on the continuum. The same was assumed to be true with reflection or
changes within one’s identity. It was an unending, cyclical process that might even produce a
steady result with one’s level of outness remaining the same. However, I believed that these
factors were chief among the ruminations to display one’s authentic self in the classroom.
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Chapter Three: Methods
In this chapter, I outline the methods that I utilized in this study to answer the research
question: How do black gay male educators construct their identities in their K-12 contexts, and
how do they express themselves authentically in their respective workplaces?
Research Design
I explored the personal experiences of black gay educators, and the ways in which they
represented themselves in their classrooms and school settings. As such, a qualitative approach
was appropriate. Qualitative research, according to Merriam and Tisdell (2016), is interested in
learning how people interpret their experiences, “how they construct their worlds, and what
meaning they attribute to their experiences” to achieve a sense of understanding as an outsider
(p. 26). I sought to capture the experiences of closeted and openly gay black teachers through
interviews consistent with a phenomenological study. Merriam and Tisdell (2016) explain that a
phenomenological study is useful in depicting the essence of the basic structure of an experience
or phenomenon, as it studies people’s conscious “experience of their life-world; that is their
everyday life and social action” and is particularly suited to “studying affective, emotional, and
often intense human experiences” (pp. 26-27). Engaging in a phenomenological study was
especially appropriate given that I have personal experience with what I was seeking to study.
This research called for me to be aware of and suspend my own prejudices, viewpoints, and
assumptions, and to bracket them
11
in such a way that limits personal biases’ effect on the
findings (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The primary method of data collection in a
phenomenological study is interviews, which are conducive to exploring, in the case of this
study, how gay black men make sense of their choices in disclosing their sexual identity or not
11
This process is detailed in Credibility & Trustworthiness
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(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). This chapter will conclude with a composite description of the
essence of the phenomenon after analysis of the aggregated data from participant interviews, as
Merriam and Tisdell (2016) describe is the product of a phenomenological study.
Sample
This study utilized purposeful sampling to locate individual to participate in the study.
Merriam and Tisdell (2016) describe purposeful sampling as a process based on the phenomenon
that a researcher is interested in understanding or gaining insight into. The selection of black
male educators who were gay, who were currently working as educators in K-12 settings allowed
for that. Given the small number of black male teachers–“less than 2% of the U.S. public labor
force”–and the presumably smaller number of those who are gay and are comfortable enough to
discuss their experiences, network and snowball sampling was best (Woodson & Pabon, 2016, p.
58). Snowball sampling personal and professional networks enabled me to secure 10 participants.
I started with personal networks, soliciting participation from individuals I knew or worked with
who fit within the sample, a network that was exhausted to no avail. I turned then to professional
networks for educators scattered about social media. I started by directly messaged those in the
networks who identified as a public-school educator and queer. However, that would have only
provided representation of a portion of my desired sample, when as close to maximum variation
as possible was the goal. I needed a range of individuals on the outness spectrum. Using public
status to identify the participants would only provide those who already publicly identified as
gay and queer. I still needed men who were closeted and/or somewhere in the middle between
that and fully out. The strategy then changed to mass messaging on those same networks. I
posted requests for participation in high-trafficked professional social media spaces similar to
those of Facebook group “Black Male Educators” to expand my search. This group was
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instrumental in finding candidates for this study. Several volunteers from the group responded to
the call for participants. The majority of these men were teachers, fitting my original goals of
having teachers specifically as participants. However, the difficulty finding participants and the
limited responses received influenced my choice to expand from just teachers to educators, as I
received requests to participate from men who were interested in the study but were employed
elsewhere in K-12 as administrators or former teachers in new roles. I believed it was appropriate
to work with these men rather than exclude them because they fit the criteria with the exception
of being a teacher. I believed their perspectives as black gay educators was equally valid in the
realm of K-12 and would provide additional layers of backgrounds in the sample, and were
thusly included. From the start, I expected there would be difficulty in finding participants who
were willing to discuss potentially sensitive topics, especially for men who are/were closeted.
For those men, openly discussing sexuality on record is likely not something taken lightly. They
are closeted for a reason, so it made sense why none of the men in this sample are closeted. In
the end, the challenges of securing participants in addition to time constraints resulted in the
number of participants being culled to 10 rather than 15 as initially planned.
Participants
With the methods described above, I secured the consent of 10 men to participate in the
study, detailed in Table 1. Each of the men identified as a black, gay teacher/educator, also
identifying as Christian, with ages ranging from 27 to 42. They were located in various parts of
the country and worked in public and charter schools. At the time of the study, eight of the men
served as teachers in a classroom environment, the others had recent past experience as
classroom teachers while being employed in the K-12 environment. I organized them by the
degree to which they were out at work.
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Table 1
Participants
Name Age Location Position Outness
Charles 27 Atlanta, GA
High School Science
Teacher
Out to coworkers and
students
Jackson 37 Southeast Georgia
High School Drama,
Theater and Dance
Teacher
Out to coworkers and
students
Tim 33 Philadelphia, PA
High School History
and English Teacher
Out to coworkers
Eric 32
Southern
California
Middle & High School
History Teacher
Out to coworkers
Ryan 41 Chicago, IL
Elementary Assistant
Principal
Out to coworkers
Joshua 32 Central Texas
High School English
Teacher
Out to coworkers
Brandon 35 Brooklyn, NY
High School Music &
Choir Teacher
Out to coworkers
Marshall 42 New Orleans, LA
High School English
Teacher
Not out at work
Sean 38
Southern
California
Former Pre-K
Teacher
Not out at work
Fred 34 Jackson, MS Pre-K Teacher Not out at work
Eric.
12
I came to be included in this study as a participant for specific reasons. First,
given that I fit all the criteria for the intended population for this study, I volunteered to be a
participant. I made the decision because my voice in this study, both as the author and as a
participant lent the most consistently available example to represent the population, that filled a
gap in the literature described above as well. However, an extended explanation that sheds light
12
I refer to myself as “Eric” in chapter four while discussing my interview data.
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on how this study proceeded is necessary. Including myself in this study facilitated a constant,
daily, exercise of self-reflection that literally changed me.
This journey started in October of 2019, well before spread COVID-19 swelled to a
pandemic, which translates into this study taking the course of 2 years. Quarantining and
working at home pushed me into a cocoon-like state that provided enough space and tension to
grapple with my reality and my mortality. The threat of COVID-19 at the time was so great in
the spring of 2020 that catastrophizing and existentialism were constant bedfellows. There was
something about the impending doom and panic of a global-crisis and isolation under the
collapsing weight of students’ mournful lamentations of a tattered school system. Pressure from
the constant dread made me question my reality, my choices up until then, and fret about life
expectancy and how I’ve spent my time thus far. I had plenty of time and space to sit and reflect
about the state of my own life and the person I had become. At the outset, I was pretty clear
about who I was in my identity, and my view on disclosing my sexuality at work was fixed. It
was not anyone’s business unless I made it so, and I carried the burden it cost to maintain the
veneer. That changed during the data collection process. I had already completed a number of
my interviews before Dr. Artineh Samkian of the Rossier School of Education at the University
of Southern California graciously agreed conduct my interview using the same interview
protocol used with the other participants. Even though I knew the questions—I wrote them—
they were difficult to answer. Dr. Samkian provided enough pressure in her performance to push
me to be honest in a way that I had not been out loud. I shared with her stories I had not told
anyone else, joyful and painful. I confessed to her it felt like therapy. Of the participants, my
interview was the longest, spanning over 4 hours across two separate interview sessions.
Analyzing my own data was by far the most challenging part of this dissertation.
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In order to suspend my bias during data analysis, I had to examine my own words,
blindly, to the point I gave myself a pseudonym to not remind myself who I was while reading
the obviously familiar story that was my own. Throughout data analysis, I wanted to be careful to
not overly identify with their stories such that my analysis was skewed, so I kept my lens on
what experiences of theirs created barriers to being open with who they (we) are. It was an
incredibly difficult task to hold myself to account for what was revealed. I was forced to question
everything in my story, including the lies I told myself to believe I was not insecure about who I
was while I questioned the words and actions of others I characterized as insecure. As I learned,
and questioned, and wrote, and analyzed more, I applied the same scrutiny to my words to
expose the hypocrisies, unconscious biases, and internalized homophobia that I carried, which I
realized distancing me from being open with my sexuality. It revealed to me how much pain I
harbored and how normalized it was in my lens that I could not see how it played defense for me.
It showed me my own experiences with childhood trauma that previously stood unrecognizable
as I grappled with the identified childhood traumas of others. Theirs looked like mine. I
recognized patterns and vulnerabilities that I had patched over with toughness. Their struggle
looked like mine. I was hearing and learning so much about their experiences, that I realized this
was the most I had ever spoken to other black gay men about their lives on a personal level,
showing to me how isolated my experience both was and was not simultaneously. Their stories,
particularly those who were radically honest with others and themselves as well, inspired me,
and energized me to reprioritize myself in my life story. Through processing that trauma and
sitting with uncomfortable truths and accepting myself for who I was, something I assumed I had
done many years ago, I moved forward, and literally began to integrate my black and gay
identities with radical honesty.
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At the time of writing, I am a middle and high school history teacher who was only out to
coworkers. I grew up in Inglewood, California with a family that more closely resembled a
matriarchy than a patriarchy. I was the only boy in a large, close-knit family guided by Christian
principles, a strong connection to the black community, culture, and history. In my interview and
often in response to Dr. Samkian’s thorough practice of asking additional probing questions, I
was candid about the discovery of my sexuality amid specific and clearly communicated signals
that I was supposed to be different from the kind of boy I was growing up to be. I spoke about
efforts to socialize me toward more traditional expectations of black masculinity and the conflict
that presented itself upon my failure to reproduce that ideal. In the K-12 environment, I openly
discussed the pressures and anxieties felt with respect to the potential of being both the sole
representation of black masculinity on campus and gayness simultaneously, while experiencing
racism and prejudice as the only black teacher at my school.
As a result of this process, how I viewed the world changed. How I viewed those around
me changed. What I valued changed—how I valued myself changed. I had to grapple with deep-
seated dissonance about the life I was living. I portrayed a strong, yet silent and salient gay
identity as a black man with the vision for liberating others without the courage to liberate
myself first. In embracing that truth, amid the isolation of quarantine and the pressure to uphold
the appearance of normal while working from home and suffering in silence, I struggled with
depression, anxiety, self-sabotage, and imposter syndrome. It was exhausting. I was exhausted. I
had been trying to play up my normal self at work, while deconstructing what my normal self
was analytically, and suddenly I could not carry the weight anymore. I taught while fighting back
tears, laughed to hide my voice cracking, and masked mania with productivity. At my climax, I
realized the adhesive to the veneer I was maintaining was self-applied. I started making smaller
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choices to let go of the expectations I had of myself and by extension the expectations others had
of me. I started to bring what I already had to the table because I was tired of bringing baggage
with me. I stopped making conscious decisions to manage my presentation, filter my speech, my
style, my mannerisms, and felt all the better for it. It was cathartic. COVID-19 was a solid
reminder that time was not my friend, and I could not afford to continue living for others, when
what mattered most to me was me. And I had to accept myself regardless of whose feathers it
ruffled. I had to learn to accept and be myself, even if it resulted in loss. Family included. But
when I learned I lost nothing as a result, I gained a bit of freedom. That was the moment I started
to be open because I realized I could be me without the penalty I imagined. There was a benefit
to me in being radically honest and it mattered. This evolution, as I would characterize it, moved
me to be bolder in my self-expression and walk more solidly in my truth. In a practical sense, it
gave me a fuller lens to apply to the stories of the men as I had gone through my own process of
transcending levels of outness.
Charles. Charles was 27 years old, and at the time of the interview he lived and worked
in Atlanta Georgia. He taught high school Biology. He grew up in a single parent household with
his mother after his father died when he was young. He initially went to school to be a doctor, as
he discovered, for his mother’s wishes, and eventually left to pursue a doctorate in education.
Charles identified as mostly out, with particular care given to the environments he finds himself
in. At work, he was out to both coworkers and students. Charles discovered he was gay early
through a premature sexual experience at 5 years old with a same-sex, kindergarten classmate.
He recalled an awakening of very specific feelings for the boy and simultaneously understanding
that it should not be. In his interview, Charles revealed that his awareness came from constant
socialization of gender expectations through his mother’s and his community’s religious beliefs.
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In his K-12 environment, Charles reported making specific choices to empower his black and
brown queer students through his focus on diversity and inclusivity in his classroom.
Jackson. Jackson jokingly described himself as someone with three personalities. There
was the version of himself that he said was like “Rafiki” from the Lion King, a prophetic mentor
and advisor of sorts with strong relationships with those around him. There was his sterner side
“who will cut you,” and then there was his drag queen persona that comes out in dance rehearsals
in what he described was a “bitch you better work!” moment after “slaying a song.” This dance,
theater, and English teacher was the second of two teachers who were out to both coworkers and
students. In his interview, Jackson reported growing up in several places around the world due to
his father’s job in the military, but was located near Atlanta, Georgia, in an area that he described
as conservative, religious, “Trump territory.” Jackson reported that he was a fifth-generation
college student, with a host of prominent family members amid a deeply religious community
and was candid about his experiences growing up as a young gay man during the outset of the
HIV epidemic. His story included his experiences growing up in a world shaped by the legacy of
racism and white supremacy, his navigations through his adulthood as a gay person with code-
switching and confronting the expectations of him as a black man in his community.
Tim. Tim was a high school history teacher who characterized his upbringing as being
among an “array of blackness.” He described his family’s pride in being black as something that
carried into what he was taught, how he was taught to value his culture, his blackness, and his
education to mirror the successful black people in his proximity. Tim’s interview tended to focus
on his connection to the black community and his prisms that prioritized his blackness over his
gayness because it was his most salient identity. Like the other men, Tim had come from a
religious family as well, another feature of his life attributed to his blackness. Though he was not
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out to his students, Tim discussed his comfort with his sexuality, having developed a stronger
since of his gayness and blackness during his time in college at an HBCU, History Black College
and University, where he was exposed to a variety of black men beyond his local environment.
From his experience, Tim developed strong connections to his identities, black and gay, although
his blackness took precedent.
Ryan. Ryan hailed from Chicago, Illinois and was the only administrator in this group of
men. In his interview, Ryan spoke about coming from a family that was less conservative when it
came to homosexuality and reported having more agency to express himself with respect to his
identity and sexuality. Because of this, as Ryan discussed, he had less qualms about his sexuality
personally, but was still cautious of his sexuality being known in spaces that were not trusted.
With respect to his professional life, Ryan previously served as a teacher and at the time of the
study was an assistant principal of an elementary school in the city. He was out only to
coworkers and his staff, and reportedly served as something of a mentor to some of his queer
staff members through the relationships he’s fostered by being open about his sexuality.
Joshua. Joshua grew up in a small town in central Texas that he described was
conservative, religious, and had a history of segregation. He grew up in a close-knit family as the
elder among his sister siblings. Joshua discussed in his interview learning about himself and his
sexuality in isolation, turning to media like the internet and to therapy to come to terms with his
identity. In addition to that, Joshua openly discussed the environment around him that sent
conflicting messages to him about being gay from both cultural and religious perspectives. In his
present context, Joshua worked as a high school English teacher and spoke about how he felt
conflicted in being open to both coworkers and his students. He spoke at length about the role his
colleagues play in building comfort in being himself around them, and minimizing his gayness in
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professional contexts where he felt vulnerable to harm, such as in the classroom or in general K-
12 environment with respect to his career progression.
Brandon. Brandon was a music and choir teacher from Brooklyn, New York who was
only out to his coworkers. Brandon was candid in his interview about his childhood trauma that
including domestic violence and bullying. As he discussed, those experiences played a large role
in his understanding of who he was supposed to be as a man in terms of masculinity, as he felt
direct social pressure to perform his masculinity according to his step-father’s and community’s
standards. Being a teacher is only one portion of his professional world, as Brandon also works
as a pastor for his church, which enabled him to speak at length on his perspective and
experiences in two communities that may not fully embrace his whole identity. With these as
sources for the conflict that surrounds his coming out, Brandon discussed how his faith informed
his views on his sexuality. He was critical of his religious community, calling them
undereducated in the discourse surrounding homosexuality and Christianity in ways the
perpetuated forces that pushed black gay men away from religion. With respect to the K-12
environment, Brandon discussed the potential for those of the black queer community to widen
the scope of black masculinity in both the church and the classroom by working to challenge
perceptions of said masculinity.
Marshall. Marshall was a high school English teacher located in New Orleans, Louisiana
and represented himself as not out at work with no intention of coming out. In his story, Marshall
spoke of numerous instances that problematized homosexuality and femininity in men, that
reportedly made him cautious of his environment with respect to revealing personal details of
himself. Marshall discussed verbal and mental abuse that he suffered because of his conflict with
gendered expectations from his mostly black and religious community that told him as a black
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man, he was out of place for being gay among them. He spoke at length of his anticipation of
hostility toward his gayness and antagonistic relationships in his work environments, particularly
among black colleagues, that cement his reasoning for not coming out at work. Despite his
comfort with his sexuality in his personal life, what he deemed private including his sexuality,
are carefully withheld to avoid the potential scrutiny he expected in his environment.
Sean. Sean was a former pre-school teacher who presently works in Inglewood, CA in a
district-level capacity. In his interview, Sean was candid about coming from a close-knit, deeply
religious family based in Louisiana. From his perspective, his community, his religion, and his
family all signaled to him that being gay was wrong, delaying acceptance of his gayness until
adulthood. Coming to terms with his religion and finding tools that validated his gayness, like
literature from black gay authors brought him closer to accepting his sexuality. In his
professional context, Sean is not out at work, and he never came out to his pre-K students while
he was a classroom teacher. His discussion centered around internal and external religious
conflict, experience with homophobia and hostility towards his gayness that inform his
anticipation of discrimination that contributes to his decision to keep his sexuality to himself at
work.
Fred. Fred is the third of the men who was not out to either coworkers or students at his
school in his Mississippi area where he also taught pre-K. Not dissimilar from the other
participants, Fred reported growing up in a close-knit and religious family that communicated
clear signals about what it meant to be a black man. A central feature in that understanding of
what made a black man was patriarchal aspirations with traditional concepts of masculinity,
highlighting his own challenges with men being feminine. In his interview, Fred was candid
about his transition away from organized religion in order to embrace his gay identity, and break
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from the ideals of his family in order to draw his own ideas for who he is an individual. With
respect to his K-12 context, his discussion centered around his conflict with being feeling
disabled to display his authentic identity for fear of discrimination, diminished perception of
credibility, and a general lack of respect that may come with his coming out.
Instrumentation and Data Collection
With this study being qualitative, per Merriam and Tisdell (2016), I was the primary
instrument for data collection, utilizing interviews as the sole source of data. The goal of this
study was to uncover the personal stories and experiences of black gay teachers, and interviews
was the most prudent means to that end. Interviews are essential in obtaining “special [kinds] of
information,” particularly of what is in someone’s mind (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016, p. 108).
Taking inspiration from the authors featured in the literature review, in-person interviews
spanned 1 to 2 hours. All interviews were conducted using the online platform Zoom, or by
telephone. With a semi-structured protocol, I used Patton’s (2002) six types of questions to fully
capture the perspectives of my participants. Patton’s system calls for questions that will ask
participants of their behavior/experiences, opinions/values, feelings/emotions, knowledge,
sensory, and background (2002). This system enabled me to discover how participants believed,
for example, Christianity has affected their perspective of themselves as a gay man, and how
they believed it influenced their sexual expression, using opinion/value questions.
Behavior/experience questions probed participants’ use of radical honesty and/or how they
display their identities in the classroom. This open-ended method allowed me to access how they
made sense of their experiences, in addition to providing the flexibility to further probe within
responses offered to target information I needed to understand according to my conceptual
framework.
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Data Analysis
I conducted data analysis in accordance with the procedures described in Creswell’s
(2014) six-step method: data management, reflective notes, coding, describing, interpreting, and
representing/visualizing data. Analysis of captured data began in the field, during the interview
process. I constantly reflected in notes to parse through what I heard and to make sense of it to
perform early analysis immediately after interviews and to get a general understanding of the
participant’s ideas, meanings, and get an “impression of the overall depth, credibility and use of
the information” (Creswell, 2014, p. 197). I recorded each interview, given participant consent,
and I transcribed them immediately following interviews. Once the interviews were transcribed, I
began open coding. During the open coding process, I used a priori coding, using concepts from
the conceptual framework, to highlight specific themes and major ideas that emerged repeatedly
in the data. One of these was religion. I anticipated conflict with religion would be among the
considerations with embracing homosexuality as part of the men’s identities. Religion was thusly
an a priori code. This further developed into a theme as it emerged repeatedly among the
interview data. For example, participants reconciling their conflict with the sexuality and religion
to accept themselves as gay was an experience that each of the men reported was vital along the
way to embracing their identity, and thus became a theme.
I documented my codes in a codebook, and through rounds of coding I aggregated ideas
numerous themes that emerged from the data to glean meanings from comparisons, contrasts,
deductions, and other analytic tools as prescribed by Corbin and Strauss (2008). The authors
stated that analytic tools help to distance the researcher from personal experiences to see new
possibilities in the data, think about phenomena in new ways and “allow for clarification or
debunking of assumptions of researchers as well as those of participants” (Corbin & Strauss,
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2008, p. 67). I utilized analytic tools before creating the codebook, and during open coding. I
started by asking questions of the data. Corbin and Strauss asserted that asking questions will
allow the researcher to begin interrogating the data and explore that meanings of the words of the
participants. Thinking about a range of possible answers gives the researcher the opportunity to
step outside of their role and see the words in the position of the other (Corbin & Strauss, 2008).
One important way this was done was with analytic memos. Because I was a member of my own
sample, identified with many of the experiences shared, that in conversation I instinctively
understood without questioning. For example, Fred described his home life as being like “The
Huxtables, but with church.” He called that normal. As a black man with similar cultural
experiences, I did not need to question further what he meant, or so I assumed during the
interview. Unpacking the phrasing in moments like that, what is meant by “normal,” revealed my
potential blind spot as the instrument in analysis and greater depths in the data, and forced me to
be more aware. In the moment, it did not strike me that I would have to communicate he meant
(and confirmed) that by Huxtables and church, he was comparing his family to what he saw on
television’s “The Cosby Show” headed by Bill Cosby and Phylicia Rashaad in the 1980s and
90s. He ultimately told me he grew up in a close-knit, two-parent home with a strong sense of
values and culture and integrity like that of what was modeled in the Cosby family. Deeper into
that, the figures in the show, what the characters represent, how they interact, are reflected in his
choice of symbolism to describe his family. Like with the heteropatriarchal stature of Dr.
Huxtable, the father, with his wife and children communicated to me, for example, this is how he
saw his own family – a man at the head of the family being a father. It helped to establish
patterns in his response with respect to what his answers revealed of his concept of masculinity.
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Processing words and meanings in this way was essential for developing codes and themes as it
helped expose the various meaning hidden among the words of the participants.
Doing this requires taking the specific words the participant use and examine it with an
opposing context as a means to grasp a range of possibilities of a phenomenon. Moreover,
Corbin and Strauss (2008) emphasize examination of the words being used to determine
emotion, time, intent, especially in the case of metaphors and similes are being use. The authors
assert that language is frequently loaded with unspoken meanings that the participant may be
privy to but are unconscious of them being transmitted accurately to the interviewer. For
example, participants made frequent reference to the phrase “the south”. The meaning of “the
south” changed depending on the context. Sometimes it meant their literal location of residence
or where they were from, or it implied religiosity or politics, usually conservative-leaning
politics. It meant that messages that layered within phrases and terms had to be unpacked for full
understanding and accuracy of interpretation.
I first conducted single-case analysis where I gave attention to repeated ideas within each
participants interview to generate individual themes that matched or expanded on a priori codes,
such as homophobia or religion. This helped me to establish a foundation upon which to compare
and contrast the interview data of each individual. Through the coding process, a number of
repeated themes appeared to be consistent across the data when I conducted a cross-case analysis
to compare and contrast the experiences of the participants and sort the data into aggregate
themes for across the interview data. I organized the most common ideas, like religious conflict,
into larger themes into a chart that expressed how each participant spoke about or identified with
that particular theme examine the nuances in their responses. Corbin and Strauss described this
process as a developing constant and theoretical comparisons. Constant comparisons group like
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terms and/or ideas, allowing the research to distinguish between differing ideas and concepts
(Corbin & Strauss, 2008). This presents the opportunity to analyze within a theme or code to
further aggregate, extracting the nuances within a set of data to examine previously obscure
ideas. Theoretical comparisons are tools to help the researcher make meaning of ideas and
concepts when its intended meaning is unclear (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). In this process, I was
able to glean whether or not, for example, which of the men had abandoned the black church to
come to terms with their gayness and why, and compare them with men who embraced their
religion despite conflict with their sexuality.
Once coding, themes, and aggregate themes were developed, I moved in to describing.
Adding descriptions to these themes began the formation of complex connections among the
themes in order to produce a narrative of the findings. Once all steps have been completed, I
developed a qualitative narrative to present my findings in relation to my research question and
proposed conceptual framework.
Credibility and Trustworthiness
To increase the credibility and trustworthiness of this study, I employed several specific
strategies. First, I aimed to capture rich descriptive data as described by Maxwell (2013) to
ensure that I obtained the entire message participants set out to deliver. In doing so, I aspired to
have all interview data recorded and then transcribed in a timely manner to allow time for
member checks. Although they were given the opportunity to review and confirm what was
captured in the interview to ensure their perceptions are accurately reported and are not
diminished in interpretation, no participant engaged in member checks. Also, in seeking rich
descriptive data I tried to obtain maximum variation to capture as many voices as possible to
learn as the most about the perceptions of black gay male teachers, reaching for saturation.
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However, given difficulties in sampling, the perspectives of closeted men are not represented in
this study.
Being that I am a Christian, black, gay male teacher, I qualified as a member of the
population I studied. Bias and personal experiences were inevitably a question I anticipated when
considering the credibility of this study. While I had insight through my own life experiences,
could I suspend my potential biases to not identify too closely with the participants in such a way
that would skew my analysis or interpret inaccurately? How I could seek to understand their
experiences without projecting my own biases about what it means to be a black gay male
educator in light of my own experiences onto them? Considering this, I took several steps to
protect the credibility of my findings. First, I frequently engaged in the practice of reflexivity as
described by Maxwell (2013). Reflecting on the data allowed me to check my own biases, to ask
myself when my own experiences were affecting my interpretation of my participants, and to
check whether or not someone’s responses were being judged by my expectations, rather than
letting them speak for themselves. I regularly asked myself questions throughout the interview
and analysis process to conduct this reflective process. I asked myself questions similar to the
following: What feelings do I have any feelings about this person’s choices, and if so what am I
feeling? How are those feelings guiding my interpretation of their experiences, and why? Why
do I think my experience is different or the same, and what may account for that difference? Do I
feel any affinity toward this person, and how does that change my interpretation of their story?
How do I identify with this person’s experience, and what blind spots do I need to grapple with
due to my familiarity? For example, I identified with a theme that emerged about the men being
“private” with respect to their sexuality and sharing personal details. I too used the same
language to justify why I did not come out. Initially, I accepted that characterization because it to
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me it was understandable and it was an idea that was presented in many of the transcripts. I had
to ask myself why I was letting them off the hook by accepting their language for what I thought
it meant, rather than assessing what other signals contributed to that view. For example, Sean
was adamant that he would not come out because of his being a private person. However, the
majority of his comments pointed to his negative experiences with coworkers and his community
with respect to his gayness. That made me look at all the others who had similar claims of being
a private person and investigated further what was really informing that position. That analysis
brought me to one of my findings that their assessment and perception of their work
environment’s hostility to gayness matching past experiences with hostility or discrimination
signaled how safe it was for them to be authentic.
Reflective notes were essential in this process, and helped me to evolve on my own
consciousness with respect to my identity by these attempts in suspending my biases. This
writing of this dissertation occurred over two years’ time, and the reflections thereof forced me
to challenge my own thinking about myself in order to stay as impartial as possible. For example,
I made reference above to the idea of being a private person was something I identified with as
well. At the outset, I found myself a bit judgmental of those had no interest in coming out despite
their commenting on the potential of improving their learning environment and making it safer
for their students. They acknowledged their representation would normalize differences within
expectations of black masculinity if they could come out themselves, but avoided doing do. In
asking myself why I had feelings about that, I realized that I was unfairly dismissing their point
of view rather than asking why they had that perspective. What else pointed to how they came to
construct that view? My bias initial kept me from asking that question and revealed I was I
unfairly holding them to account for something I had not acknowledged in myself either – that I
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too was guilty of the same. I deduced that on some level, there was the possibility that saying
they were a private person was also a way express they simply were not at a point in their life
where they could take on the potential challenges of coming out. I understood that was possible
because that was where I was in my life at the time. Dr. Shaun Harper, who served on my
dissertation committee challenged me during my proposal phase to confront the dissonance that I
had in remaining private despite my reasons for it while challenging others for not being out.
That prompted me to assess my own data more deeply despite my initial reticence to do so
because I recognized the truth in that dissonance. I had been using that phrase myself to
deprioritize acknowledging my how I might be holding myself back from evolving with my own
identity because I was not ready to do so either. It made me treat myself as a participant
differently because it forced me to hold up a mirror to myself, how did I construct my own
identity with respect to same things I asked of the other participants. I had to acknowledge my
own traumas to separate out my experiences with effeminacy, homophobia, etc. to come to my
own understanding that in judging them, I needed to judge myself too. Moving past that
dissonance helped me to hold myself accountable to my own choices and biases, and in dealing
with them, elevated my vantage onto their data. In the end, I came to a point where I had come
out to my own students, something I had not anticipated doing at the outset of this process, as a
result, giving me new perspective to apply in retrospect. Reflecting in both written and voice
memos in additional consistently discussing my notes with my dissertation chair enabled me to
fully interrogate the data impartially. Conducting these reflective memos helped particularly in
the development of interview questions, to check for questions that may lead a participant to
respond in a manner that matches my own perception of a situation. These notes were a critical
aspect of increasing credibility and trustworthiness of the study.
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Limitations and Delimitations
The most significant limitation of this study is my reliance on the honesty and openness
of the participants. How much they revealed, how complete the stories they told were, and how
willing they were to spend the time necessary for fully capturing their story had great potential to
affect the outcome of this study, so I asked additional probing follow-up questions during
interviews as much as possible. Regarding delimitations, I must state that I am a novice
researcher. This was the first time I engaged in this level of research, meaning there might have
been moments where a more experienced researcher may have probed further or asked different
kinds of questions during interviews, and make a more experienced use of the present data.
There were moments early on where I did not necessarily think to follow up with a question. For
example, Fred responded that he “liked his respect” when asked why he did not want to be out in
his work environment. Being my first interview, I did not follow up with a question to ask what
that meant, and had he not came around to elaborating, I would not have learned what he meant.
As I progressed through data collection, I began to know through experience when to probe
further. Additionally, all the instruments used in the study were of my own making and were not
as sophisticated as those of a veteran researcher. Also, time to complete this study is limited,
thereby constraining the breadth of the study as well. Because of this, sample population had to
be modified. The number of participants was intentionally culled in response to difficulty in
finding willing participants. The focus of the study expanded from just teachers to reflect
“educators” to include former-teachers and current administrators who would otherwise meet the
sample criteria to maximize as well on the limited responses to my requests for interviews.
Additionally, my conceptual framework sought to include the voices of those who were
completely closeted, in both their personal and professional contexts, to represent the
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experiences of fully closeted individuals. Given no one in this demographic volunteered for the
study, their perspective is not represented in the findings for this study.
Ethics
Rubin and Rubin (2005) outlined a number of guidelines to follow to ensure a study is
ethically sound. Following their lead, many considerations were taken to preserve the integrity of
the interview process and the study as a whole. First, I obtained consent from each participant
regarding the recording of interviews. Captured data was offered to be reviewed with participants
to verify the intended messages they sought to convey. Participants were informed that their
identity will be protected as pseudonyms will be used in place of their names, and that any
personal information and data will only be used for the purposes of this study. To demonstrate
respect for the participants and the interview process, no participant was forced or pressured to
answer questions. This would not only have skewed interview data, but it would also have
limited the responses given, thereby compromising attempts at collecting rich data (Rubin &
Rubin, 2005). They were told that they did not have to answer any question that they did not
want to answer. I recorded only with permission and made them aware that if they asked me to
turn the recorder off, I would do so. All participants consented to recording without objection. I
made strides to not communicate my preferences with respect to any answer so that they were
able to tell me their experience rather than the experience they might believe I want to hear from
them. I used a generally conversational tone of voice to help ensure they did not see me as in a
position of power, but mostly to aid in their comfort in discussing potentially sensitive
information. I confirmed their awareness that their participation in this study was voluntary, in
addition to confirming the protection of their private data. All records, communications, and
interview data was modified to obscure the identities of the men, their names replaced with
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pseudonyms as soon as identifiable information was collected. This data was kept in a private
and protected folder that was not publicly accessible. Maintaining a level of trust between the
interviewer and participant was of the utmost importance. As such, questions were open-ended
allowing the participant to respond how they chose, without the me as the interviewer leading or
coercing responses. Follow-up probing questions were used appropriately in efforts to have the
participant elaborate or clarify their responses to the best of my ability. Lastly, this study was
approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and followed the ethics rules provided by the
board.
Conclusion
The purpose of this study is to understand how black gay educators arrive at their
decision to disclose their sexual identities or not in a school environment. In efforts to answering
my research question, I used a qualitative approach to conduct a phenomenological study that
examined the perspectives and beliefs of black gay male educators. Data was collected through
interviews and were be analyzed throughout the entire data collection process. The interview
data will be coded and analyzed using the processes described by Creswell (2014) and Corbin
and Strauss (2014). As described above, I am aware of implications of my being a novice
researcher and limitations on this study as a result. Maintaining reflexive memos, member
checking were instrumental in keep my personal biases in check, considering I have personal
experience with the phenomenon this study is sought to understand.
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Chapter Four: Findings
The interviews provided a wealth of information in pursuit of answering my research questions:
How do black gay male educators construct their identities in their K-12 contexts, and how do
they express themselves authentically in their respective workplaces? At the core of these stories
were emotional experiences that offered a peep hole into their view of the world and into what
made them see it that way. There was an unsurprising similarity among the stories of the men,
who again were K-12 educators in various parts of the country. With the goal of understanding
what influenced these black gay men’s agency to express who they were, I examined several
seemingly parallel stories of self-conflict with respect to religion, race, culture, sexuality, identity
expressions, emotional trauma, anxiety, and isolation. There were also stories of growth,
discovery, acceptance, self-love, honor, and departure from painful things in their lives to be the
men they are. These men provided rich details from their personal histories to understand what
influences their decisions regarding the disclosure of their sexuality in their K-12 contexts.
Several findings emerged from analysis of their transcripts, many of which extended beyond the
purpose and scope of this dissertation and are thusly excluded. The men aligned across three
categories of how out they decided to be out in their K-12 contexts: Not out at work, out at work
to coworkers only, and out at work to both coworkers and students. From the data it is evident
that these choices came with the heavy weight of their perception that gayness was not fully
acceptable in their environments, particularly for black men, as they learned in their lived
experiences. A consistent thread through their stories was specific forces in their lives that
communicated what a black man was according to those close to them, parents, family, peers,
and teachers, in contrast with the black men they were becoming independent of those forces.
They reported growing up at odds with these expectations that ultimately told them that black
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men were not feminine and certainly were not gay, experienced consequences associated with
not meeting expectations of gender and through that, expectations of blackness. Despite being
raised to embody archetypical characteristics of a black male identity relative to their cultural
and religious environments that problematized effeminacy, the men interviewed in this study
exhibited bifurcated identity expressions to diminish the impact knowledge of their gayness may
have in a given context. They operated with a belief that a black gay identity was controversial in
a variety of spaces and contexts and learned to expect resistance to identity expressions and/or
characteristics that were stereotypical identifiers of gayness in men, like femininity and other
failures of black masculine competence as defined by their respective communities. Their choice
of outness in their K-12 contexts reflects not just a choice to be out, but also the result of their
grappling with complex navigations of growing up with a host of expectations and pressures that
forges their perspective on who they are, and what they allow people to see of themselves.
The first finding that emerged in that data was that historic and cultured gender
expectations of masculinity held of them as black men while they were black boys were at the
foundation of their identity expressions. Those expectations were informed by the legacy of
slavery, religion, and pressure to honor ancestry by becoming the men their forebearers hoped
they would be. The second finding that emerged revealed that, the men experienced socialization
toward communal standards of masculinity through soft and hard heteronormative oppression
that problematized femininity and other stereotypical identifiers of gayness. The third finding is
that the men discovered their sexuality from a very young age, simultaneously growing up gay
while being conditioned to not be, resulting in self-discovery under a sense of isolation. The
fourth finding that emerged revealed that in anticipation of discrimination or harassment, the
men construct a professional persona that obscures their gay identity in various contexts in the
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K-12 environment due to their perception of how they would be received as gay men. The last
finding the emerged revealed that in this sample, coming out was not necessarily a priority, and
if it happened, it would need to be an organic moment that required it.
Legacy Expectations of Black Masculinity
The experiences of the men illuminated their perspective on the legacy expectations of
black masculinity as transported through history to telegraph to them what was allowable for
them to embody as black boys becoming black men. A theme that emerged in the data was the
belief among the men that those ideas came from their ancestors as black Americans persisting
through racist and white supremist structures. As it was communicated to them in a multitude of
ways, the men were expected to become patriarchs in their environments’ dominant expression
of manhood–among that was a leader, protector, and procreator of a family within a
heteronormative lens, conducive to acceptance in a white, Christian, mainstream American
worldview that would not accept them otherwise. With respect to religion, a theme among the
data revealed religion was among the forces that communicated to them that gayness was wrong
and that heteropatriarchal ideals of masculinity were the norm in their cultural and religious
communities. Each of them recalled being given explicit and implicit signals pushing them to a
pre-defined standard of masculinity that included demonstrating toughness and strength, among
other qualities as they were being molded into masculine men who could succeed in the world,
under rigid parameters that saw black maleness in limited ways, which is another theme
expressed in the data. Becoming the men their ancestors and parents and community expected
them to be exerted a pressure to make them proud by becoming the men they believed their
forebears wanted/expected to them to be, standing directly in contrast with the men they were
becoming.
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A Lot of it Comes from the Slavery Days
What emerged in the data, like the arguments cited above, was the gender expectations of
these black men were rooted in generational responses to racism and white supremacy, rendering
gayness invisible as heteropatriarchal ideals of were prioritized for transcendence through the
barriers of racism. They were given messages as part of their history that told them literally and
figuratively that gayness did not exist, and in that they were denied the opportunity to see
gayness thrive, and if it did, it did so in the shadows. For these black men, to be a man was to be
heterosexual and patriarchal, corresponding to the perceived standing order of a family, and
portray a narrow interpretation of what it meant to be a man. Among the participants, Fred’s
account best represented the history of these arguments, particularly within his view of what was
expected of him as a black man. He invoked the legacy of his ancestors being enslaved to
communicate how he understood gayness was not within his family’s view of a black man.
I think a lot of it comes from the slavery days, you know. The expectation was that you
were a black man. You were supposed to provide for—as a black man that you had to be
respectful of the woman that you were with. There was no whole thing about you being
gay or none of that, you know? So…you were expected to be with a woman. You were
supposed to live that whole Bible life coming from the South type mentality…The man
was the head of the house, and there’s all these ways that no one else should be at the
head of the house. No woman should be it. You are… and that’s been ingrained into the
black man…And I think part of it comes from slavery. And then the ancestors drilling
that into the older generation…my parents’ generation. So that’s where for me, I think it
comes from…
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“A lot of it comes from the slavery days”— Fred’s words here demonstrates where, in his view,
the expectations of him as a black man come from, consistent with bell hooks (2004), Williams
(2010), and Clisby (2020). Fred revealed that he understood his masculinity had to include being
a provider, being with a woman, and not being gay. As he said, “you were expected to be with a
woman” and that was an idea that “that’s been ingrained into the black man.” His words here
reveal a bit more depth within those expectations. From Fred’s view, this was not his singular
assigned expectation and experience, but that this was for black men in general, or at least in his
community. He said “ingrained into the black man” which included him. The expectation of him
was not just because he was a man, but because he was a black man, which implied a specific
connection to an image larger than himself. That is consistent with bell hooks’s (2004)
commentary with lifting and supporting black men into a particular patriarchal image, not just
for the man himself, but for others who identify with him. In bell hooks commentary, this was to
counter anti-black racist narratives to delegitimize the black family. That could certainly be
contributable to Fred’s perspective. It was communicated to Fred that a black man was
heterosexual, in pursuit of a wife to provide for a family because the world expected it, and his
community needed it. Further, this was not just the expectations of his parents, but his parents’
parents, and “society” as a whole. Fred understood the world saw him in that identity, “there was
no whole thing about you being gay or none of that,” using his words to communicate how he
understood being gay was not part of that.
That Bible Life
Adding to the idea that a black man was supposed to be the patriarch was Fred’s belief
that it also came from his being from the south and living that “Bible life,” which points to that
identity and the exclusion of gayness was due to his nativity and his religion. Though Fred
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represented this as potentially location specific, this was an idea that each of the men expressed
as well in varying geographic locations in the US. That would suggest consistency with the
history highlighted above, and their connection to diasporic roots in slavery in the south supports
the argument that these were shared experiences among these black gay men. All the men
reported having an upbringing in close proximity to Christianity, in the black church. This
suggested a belief among them that within black Christian church circles was a particular
pressure that reinforced black patriarchal ideals while simultaneously stigmatizing and
perpetuating the silence of gayness within black communities. Fred again best represented this
idea in his interview, speaking for those who identified with that experience. Referring back to
Fred’s original quotation above, he said “that whole Bible life coming from the South type
mentality” was part of what he understood was expected of him as black man. His “bible life”
centered his Christian experience with those heteronormative, patriarchal expectations specific to
his race, and highlighted how, in his view, those were not only tied to masculinity. They were
also tied to a larger religious worldview – black, Christian worldview. This is not just what
society wanted but was also expected of him as Christian in relation to those around him. Fred
spoke further on how the black church was a central part of his experience, and in context with
his own conflicting gayness, how his being in his black church community told him that being
gay was a disqualifying sin and was punishable in this life and the afterlife.
I grew up in the Bible belt, as I said, the deep south. So therefore, you know, church was
everything. You saw everybody in a church on Sunday, the drunks, the whores,
everybody was in church. Um, but again, for me growing up, it was always said that if
you do this, you go to hell…if you do this, you go to hell. Um, and then if you repent for
it, it’s okay. And it’s that drilled mentality that a man should not lay with another man as
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he will with a woman. And that’s the part that in the black community, for me, gets mis-
shaped and misconceived, um, and misunderstood as a black community. Because
looking at like the white population, they accept their children for who they are…and that
they need to get that child some help. They do what they need to do. Black people, you
know, he’s a fag, he’s a punk, you know, he’s going to hell anyway. So whatever you do,
don’t matter, he’s going to catch AIDS and he’s gonna die. You know, that type of thing,
you know, and that’s been ingrained into the black man that you have to live this prestige
life, you married a woman, you have children, you have a picket white fence, 2.5
children, you know, to this very day, I have a cousin who’s married to a gay man and has
been married to him for well, over 30 years, his boyfriend comes and stays. You know, I
don’t want to live like that. I don’t want to be with a woman for the sake of society.
The messaging around gayness and masculinity in Fred’s community explicitly communicated to
him that being gay was an egregious act among his religious community. As Fred pointed out,
the church was “everything,” a pillar in his community that included everyone, even the drunks
and whores; sinners who would be forgiven and embraced if they repented. Yet, gayness stands
out in his observations for its harsher reception. Gayness was connected with ridicule (“he’s a
fag, he’s a punk”), with damnation (“he’s going to hell anyway") after inevitable punishment
(“So whatever you do, don’t matter, he’s going to catch AIDS and he’s gonna die”). This was the
recourse for the violation of laying with a man he as would a woman, subverting the norm. As it
was communicated to Fred, that norm was the standard heteronormative, patriarchal family–that
“bible life,” which placed gayness outside of both standards of masculinity via the patriarchy,
and in violation of religious norms. Moreover, Fred contrasted this with his perception of how
white people dealt with the similar phenomenon, citing his example of their accepting their
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children for who they were. Without judging the veracity of that statement, Fred believed this
was inherently a black thing. Again, as a black, Christian, man, he was expected to be seen living
that “bible life,” and as Fred described it, gayness was at odds with that. What makes that clearer
was the example he cited in his cousin’s relationship. That came in conversation with the
expectation that was ingrained in black men, that they were supposed to have a wife and family
and such. Implied in that story was the husband’s gayness was not known to outsiders, but to
maintain the image of that “bible life” or that “prestige life” as Fred put it, the hidden,
extramarital relationship was maintained behind a heterosexual front. In Fred’s view, they still
projected the image of a heterosexual couple outwardly, but the gayness within was the quiet part
to reflect that expectation. In other words, technically one could be gay, but must not look like it,
lest they be subjected to the judgmental rebukes and treatment described above. Fred’s words
imply that their arrangement was a choice made to conform to the social pressure that diminished
gayness to the point it was non-existent. He said, “There was no whole thing about you being
gay or none of that, you know?” This is reflective of an argument that Amideo (2020) made, that
black queerness is largely relegated to the space of the dead, given its unspeakable nature, as if
socially dead. His argument highlighted how black gayness exists in a shadow realm, or in the
borderlands of marginal social-cultural group (Clisby, 2020). What this highlights, if Fred’s
experience parallels the experience of black gay men at large, is that gayness posed a challenge
to the standard order of things; that it subverted the power of the heteropatriarchy because the
masculinity within abdicates its power and threatens psychic and social chaos (Clisby, 2020;
hooks, 2004; Pascoe, 2005; Riggs, 2017). Again, as Fred revealed, black Christian men could not
be gay. They were supposed to have wives and build families. The ancestors said so. One could
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not be both an arbiter of the heteropatriarchy and be antithetical to its canon, establishing a core
conflict within the participants: honor the ancestors or honor themselves in defiance.
Pride
Further connecting the implications of history and legacy was the theme of needing to
make their ancestors, parents, grandparents, etc. proud by becoming the men they believed their
forebears communicated to them to be, standing directly in contrast with the men they were
becoming. Eight of 10 shared details parallel to those of Tim who highlighted how the
patriarchal expectations of black masculinity were given at an early age, came with a pressure to
meet those expectations because they were given to them by their parents and grandparents. Tim
commented further about how that pressure to make good on their investments into him through
struggle and sacrifice factored into his own decision-making processes as he made specific
choices about himself to make them proud. That included pursuing specific goals that he knew
would please them. Tim recalled,
I think just knowing, you know, the struggles that my, my grandparents faced so that my
parents could go to college. Um, and, and, and not just that, but just growing up as black
people in Jim Crow. I think every decision I make in my life is made with my family and
my legacy in mind, um, wanting to make my grandparents, parents proud and make them
know, um, if they are in a place looking down that their work was not in vain. I was
taught very early on to value education…I was taught, you know, to value my culture, to
be proud of being black very early on. I knew from a very early age, like I knew that it
was never a question of whether I would go to college. I knew that I always would, it was
just where I would go. Um, I knew that it was expected of me to do well in school, you
know, to be respectful to my elders and all of those expectations I’ve met easily, but I
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think where we kind of ran into some tension was when it came to the, came to the
expectations to perform boy hood or, um, masculinity. Um, that’s when I, I guess, um, I
don’t want to say fell short, but that’s when I ran into some tension with, um, family as
even as a small child. I think once I started school, went out into the world, um, people
started, you know, making comments to my parents saying, “Oh, he acts like a girl.” “Oh,
he’s feminine.” And, um, I think, you know, my, my, my mother in particular, you know,
not wanting people to look at, be looking at her sideways, felt the need to, you know, try
to quote unquote, toughen me up, have me go out and hang with neighborhood boys, um,
and me get into sports and stuff. So, um, definitely early on there was, um, you know, a
little controversy over, um, the way I presented my, my gender presentation, I guess you
would say.
Eight of the 10 men expressed similar sentiments of needing to make their forebears proud
because of their legacies, illuminating the conflict with the men they were becoming, pushing
them toward masculine standards. Not only were the men expected to be patriarchs, the men also
carried the weight of not fulfilling the wishes and/or vision their parents had for them, as Tim
said “from a very early age.” To Tim, his parents communicated to him that education was part
of that vision because they centered it in his experience, so much that “it was never a question”
of if he would go to college but where he would go. In that sense, college and the connotations
thereof would be honoring what his parents set out for him to do, so that “their work was not in
vain.” His reference of Jim Crow with respect to his parents’ suggests consistency with bell
hooks (2004) and Williams (2010) arguments on hindrance of black people through anti-black
racism and racist structures. His words imply Jim Crow impacted their educational opportunities
in some way, suggesting his view was that because they struggled, he must go on to become
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something lest that struggle be in vain. Other participants reported in similar stories, overt racism
and segregation in the Jim Crow south diminished if not barred them from opportunities at
education and providing for their families in gainful ways, so these men were being pushed to do
better because the ability to do better was obtainable. Progress. The need to honor their parents’
and grandparents’ struggles and wills was connected on a deeper level than just doing what their
parents wanted. His performance as a man was honoring his ancestors, his culture, his parents,
his blackness, as Tim communicated, exerting a pulling force to align closer to traditional
expectations of black masculinity. This presented the conflict with becoming a black man not
within the expected norm and had direct implications on his agency to deviate from that norm. In
Tim’s recollection of his childhood, he recognized feeling that he fell short with respect to
meeting at least his mother’s expectations of him as a boy citing the tension he felt with respect
to his gender expectation. He needed to be more like the neighborhood boys who did boy things,
lest his mother would disapprove, in addition to those in his environment who expected to see
him as a “normal” black boy, as he believed/understood it reflected poorly on his mother in the
community. The implication here is that the need to identify with traditional ideals of blackness
central to their local experience was a force that maked conforming to it a priority over
identifying with gayness or embracing effeminacy in cultural spaces. This is potentially
referential to Rasmussen’s (2004) point that people of social groups who are disempowered view
coming out and identifying with gayness as less of an electable choice to remain connected to
cultural identity when the two appear to be at odds. Rasmussen argued coming out could
compromise connectedness, and is an unworthy sacrifice as to celebrate sexuality, which is an
identity seen secondarily to that from skin color. There may be little agency in control the
perceptions others have due to skin color, but there is certainly more agency in trying to control
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the disclosure of sexuality identity particularly with the knowledge of how it might be received
(Rasmussen, 2004). Invoked here is the risk of membership of his blackness like Riggs (2017)
argued with respect to his belief that gayness invalidated blackness. As such, the men in the
study who aligned with Tim’s experience had to consider the weight of that perception.
Toughen Up!
Each of the men communicated that they experienced their family and community
members as often targeting their femininity and potentially gay behavior to impart and mold a
sense of masculinity into them. In their unique stories, the men discussed what they believed to
be a range of well-meaning practices and explicit pressures to project and/or perform
masculinity. They described how they received a consistent directives, jeers and comments and
taunts that communicated to them that they were outsiders in masculinity as defined by their
respective communities. As habitual line-steppers of the socialized gender divide, they were
border dwellers akin to what Clisby (2020) represented in her work in relation to queer theory.
Clisby argued through a queer theory lens that these are people who inhabit “marginal spaces,
living at the borders of socio-cultural, religious, sexual, ethnic, or gendered norms…” (p. 1).
Drawing, upon Butler’s queering the scene, “a practice and a method that enables us to challenge
and subvert normative understandings and representations of gender, sexualities, and identities,”
Clisby asserted that previously unrecognizable systems of oppression can be exposed when what
is happening at the border is examined (2020, p. 2). Through their interviews it was evident that
the men were conditioned to align with the family’s and community’s views of masculinity,
regardless of their own understanding of it, through daily conversational moments. This taught
them to recognize that behaving in a way others deemed feminine would net a varying negative
response, thereby problematizing femininity and its existence within them. These interactions
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expressed themselves across two themes. The first theme represents the soft oppression,
reflective of hegemonic heteronormativity. These were more subtle, normalized interactions that
occurred daily, and exerted a consistent pressure to socialize the men toward a communally-
defined concept of masculinity, by problematizing femininity. The second theme represents a
harder heteronormative oppression, in that some of the participants experienced the rejection of
their feminine in more direct, aggressive, and harmful ways that forcefully told them who they
were as boys or men was inconsistent and unacceptable, and to push them to conform to their
version of masculinity.
Soft Heteronormative Oppression
Each of the participants experienced microaggressions of sorts that called out their
femininity and communicated what was acceptable for them to do as young boys who were to
grow up to be men. The men described these experiences as subtle rebukes, small gestures and
directions to remind them how they were expected to carry themselves or behave because they
were boys and not girls. For example, Joshua and I shared in our stories how these made up a
large part of our regular interactions with close family members. Joshua said in his interview,
“My grandmother would always express to me, like I shouldn’t, um, do things a certain way.
Like I shouldn’t…I used to roll my eyes and according to them, I was like really girly.” In this
statement, Joshua indicated the way that his grandmother told him that, to be a boy, he
“shouldn’t roll [his] eyes,” because rolling his eyes was something that girls did. He was
simultaneously being told how his grandmother defined masculinity and that his definition did
not fit into hers. Boys certainly did not roll their eyes, girls did. It communicated to Joshua her
disapproval of that behavior coming from what was supposed to be a boy, and told Joshua with
her repetition, it was a problem when he did not align with her idea of masculinity.
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Further, Joshua reflected on another way his family, from his perspective, targeted his
femininity to communicate what was acceptable for him to do as a boy. He described how he
was not allowed to participate in or associate with things they felt were girly, like how he was
compelled to choose blue as his favorite color, instead of his real favorite color, purple, because
everyone else thought it was a girl’s color. He said,
Boys didn’t like… I couldn’t like certain colors. Like when I was a kid, I remember we
had to pick our favorite colors and at the time, like, purple wasn’t… I mean, [as a kid], I
think more neutral, but purple is my favorite color, but I picked blue because everybody
thought that was a girl color. Um, and I had a lot of like boy toys, but I like to play… I
would play my sister’s dolls. I will listen to… she would have like girly music, and I’d
listen to her music and my music, like I would take her CDs. But, um, those were some
things and boys are supposed to be tough and not, um, not cry or anything like that…
Here again, Joshua was clear that, to be a boy, he had to adopt the terms of those around him and
he had to forgo the color that appealed to him, purple, because that was not within the definition
of male. He did not associate purple with any particular gender as he felt it was “neutral.” To
him, there should not have been any problem with him choosing purple, because it was purple
and just what he liked best. However, because “everybody thought that was a girl color,” he
learned in this context that his choosing purple was outside of what they thought was boy
behavior, and for some reason, was a problem. This is among what told Joshua, that in his
environment, boys were not supposed to like or do specific things that girls liked or did, even
with respect to toys and music. He understood there were “boy toys” and “girly music.” Again,
to Joshua, those around him set clear, gendered boundaries and labels along the
masculine/feminine binary, and it told him not just what he could do, but what he was supposed
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to reflect as a boy. Playing with dolls and listening to girly music did not telegraph “tough,” and
it was clear to him that his family expected that from him or to be that, even if it was not innate
in him.
In both examples, rather than having the agency to express himself as he wished, he
believed he had to conform in their judgement. As he understood it, Joshua’s failure to ascribe to
their expectations of what a boy was would be met with a negative reaction. Since his
grandmother, for example, “always” told him not to do girly things, it additionally
communicated to him those expectations do not just exist, but that they would be enforced. At a
minimum, Joshua knew that when it was time to go to granny’s house, he was not supposed to do
certain things because it was not boy-like despite how he might naturally feel to express. He had
to do like the other boys and not the girls. If not, he would be admonished in some way for
violating these social terms of engagement. The constant presence of the enforcement of
masculinity through microaggressive missives functionally served as a conditioning mechanism
to make Joshua understand masculinity through the views of others around him, and to temper
his expressions in response to their expectations rather than his own.
This sort of boundary enforcing of gender norms is reflective of social constructivist
arguments relating to gender that are responsive to assumptions of homosexuality. Gender not
only is a social construct, but as Butler (1991) argued, gender is “a kind of imitation for which
there is no original” (p. 21) since there is no true definition of what boy/girl, masculine/feminine
is. Instead, gender is what the collective recognizes it to be based on their experience within this
system of imitation for gender to be normed according to hegemonic and stereotypic
understandings of heterosexuality (Butler, 1991). In other words, Joshua’s family and
surrounding unnamed community members reflected a dominant social, heteronormative
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hegemony that defined what was masculine behavior, and marginalized what was different. From
this snippet in Joshua’s story, some of what Joshua believed those around him felt was outside
the norm for the idea of a boy was observable. Boys did not roll their eyes, they did not pick
purple as their favorite color, and when Joshua did, they reacted accordingly to reinforce this
reproduction of their gender norms. In line with Butler’s argument, Joshua was asked repeatedly
to imitate what they believe boys do, as a means to train him to their definition masculinity
(1991). Their heterosexualized gender ideals were imparted to him through “imitative strategies”
of a “compulsive and compulsory repetition,” mechanized through cognizable failure (Butler,
1991, p. 21). For those around Joshua to be able to point out Joshua’s lack of masculinity, his
failure to reproduce those norms had to be visible. Again, Joshua’s grandmother always said
something when he did something a certain way. Those moments of his failures to imitate or
reflect their preconceived gendered expectations triggered their response to correct the wrong,
exerting that force onto him to conform.
The evidence suggests that these masculinizing actions in their youth were how the men
understood their effeminacy was a problem in their environment, not just because it breeched
social gender norms, but that it also communicated an emerging gayness that needed to be
suppressed. Seven of the 10 recalled how their choices and expressions were suppressed and/or
marginalized after amassing an understanding that certain things they did projected queerness to
others, under a presumption that feminine qualities in them equated gay. Eric discussed
grappling with this to meet his family’s expectations of him as a boy.
My mother made a couple comments. Like I usually will pick up things with my
fingertips, instead of like grabbing it with my whole hand… or I’ll have a broken wrist or
something like that. And they [family] will always try to correct it every single time they
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saw it… It was a sissy thing they had to get out of me… To Wong Foo, Thanks for
Everything, Julie Newmar was a movie about drag Queens with Wesley Snipes, um,
Patrick Swayze and John Leguizamo, and on there of course was, RuPaul, you know,
world famous drag queen…we were very clear about that, this is not how guys are
supposed to be. This is what’s funny. This is just entertainment. This is not something
that we can be. And any other image like that was always, definitely, remarked
negatively about…how these faggy ass dudes do and stuff… And I’m like, Oh, well I
guess this is not an option for me…so anytime I was around the girls too long, I had to
go. Couldn’t be in the kitchen…if I wanted to watch how my grandmother cooked the
food–I love food! I couldn’t be in there too long. My grandfather would go, ‘Get up out
that kitchen with all them girls and come over here with us.’ I had to do boy things. I had
to stay away from playing with the girls.
The same kind of subtle prods at femininity are here in Eric’s story, the infraction of his broken
wrist or utilization of his fingertips. However, more is revealed with respect to the centering of
drag and what Richardson (2009) wrote about with the concept of effeminophobia relying on
stereotypes to identify homosexual behavior. Richardson (2009) argued that effeminophobia, the
fear of effeminacy or gender transitivity using observable stereotypes to recognize behaviors that
deviate from gender expectations as latent or undisclosed homosexuality. Richardson said further
that this belief system relies on a conflation of effeminacy with homosexuality with
heteropatriarchal underpinnings (2009). In short, specific actions and characteristics are
interpreted as telegraphing homosexuality. The men in drag in Eric’s recalling of To Wong Foo,
might not necessarily have been homosexual, but their feminine presentation exported that
perception to general audiences experiencing it, and Eric’s recollections of his family’s reactions
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to seeing them aligns with Richardson’s framing of problematized effeminacy (2009). Here,
drag, as in men portraying themselves as women, is what Eric was given from his family as an
explicit example of the problem with men embracing femininity through witnessing his family’s
reactions to it. He recognized in their negative feedback and comments that the masculine brawn
of Wesley Snipes wrapped in a gold mini-dress with a copper-colored wig and makeup is an
illustration of what they thought were fags, not men. A fag, to use the language of Pascoe (2005),
is representative of a failure in masculine competence, and is a transient label; as one may be a
fag, they can also stop being a fag with correction. Eric’s words reflected that he believed his
family believed that faggotry was performative, seen in his words “how these faggy ass dudes
do,” and what “guys are not supposed to be.” He reportedly witnessed that disapproval
repeatedly, as he said, it was “always, definitely, remarked negatively about,” contributing to an
understanding that that kind of masculine performance was not acceptable among his family, at
least in his view. In tandem with his understanding that the tempering of his feminine
expressions was a “sissy thing they had to get out of [him],” it is apparent then that the
messaging encompassed in those redirections to act less feminine transmitted deeper, and
potentially more harmful messages. Arguably, several messages simultaneously were
communicated here in this scenario. First is what Eric believed constituted fag-like behavior
from his family’s perspective. Second is how Eric understood that fag-like behavior would be
treated. Third is that he was passively being called a fag every time in those moments his
masculinity was policed. This would then mean that Eric understood that his family might have
saw him as a fag, and it is evident he understood there were limits to his behavior to avoid being
one; as he demonstrated navigating just that scenario: “And I’m like, Oh, well I guess this is not
an option for me…so anytime I was around the girls too long, I had to go.” In Pascoe’s analysis
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of the fag discourse, he argued that the fluidity of the fag identity is “what makes the spectre of
the fag such a powerful disciplinary mechanism,” such that boys in turn police their own
behaviors “out of fear of having the fag identity permanently adhere and definitive enough so
that boys recognize a fag behavior and strive to avoid it. (2005, p. 330).
It is here where Eric reported suppressing his innate expressions to do exactly that, turning away
from “the girls” and cooking in the kitchen with his grandmother because to him, he registered
that as communicating fag-like behavior, as confirmed from his grandfather’s beckoning. The
regulation of his own behavior, decisions made to police himself according to the standards of
masculinity his family communicated to him in expectation of either being associated with
faggotry, ultimately made clear that femininity is the problem, and he must suppress specific
actions and behaviors to not be seen as gay and be othered.
Harder Heteronormative Oppression
The second theme represents a harder heteronormative oppression, in that 5 out of the 10
shared experiencing the rejection of their femininity in more direct, aggressive, and harmful
ways that told them who they were as boys or men was inconsistent and unacceptable, and
pushed them to conform to their family and community’s version of masculinity. A common
thread among these stories happened to be centered in sports, and the expectation that black boys
are supposed to competent in sports. Pascoe wrote in his study on the fag discourse that sports is
among a number of ways the configuration of gender, particularly masculinity is promoted,
challenged, and reinforced within social institutions, and the men provided several stories where
sports was used to “toughen them up” (2005). Sports would seemingly place them around more
masculine boys, make them be boys, doing boy things, thereby making them less girly. Brandon
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shared an example where his lack of skill in basketball and preference for the arts conflicted with
the expectation of masculinity from his stepfather. Brandon said,
He always wanted me to toughen up. I feel like he believed as a black boy growing up
that I should be exposed to sports and things that were more masculine because things of
the arts were not as masculine. I do remember wanting to take a dance class as a 12-year-
old boy. And, I was already in the choir and he was like, no, we’re not going to add
another artistic medium to his life. Like, ‘He can’t take dance classes. It’s for gay kids.’
He wanted me to be like my brother. [My brother] was a sports fanatic, so he was like
really into basketball and football and all stuff like that. Um, and I wasn’t. I was just kind
of like the singer in the family. There was one instance where my stepfather had to put
together a basketball team in the neighborhood and, um, I wasn’t good enough to play in
the basketball team, but, you know, he kind of like openly, publicly made a statement that
I should be, you know, actually join the cheerleading team. I think that was his way of,
you know, throwing jolts at me, I guess, to try to get a good response to make me feel
like, you know, maybe, oh, well let me go to the boys. But for me that was like, it was the
furthest thing from my mind, and I was like I was going to do what I’m going to do, you
know. Let me go and, you know, cheer with the people. Cheer with the girls or whatever.
Black boys play sports. That is what was communicated to Brandon from his stepfather. Sports
were masculine, and it is evident here that both the stepfather and Brandon himself saw
masculinity being performed through sports. It communicated toughness, where the arts did not.
The oppression is here in two parts. First is in the use of shame. Brandon’s stepfather
weaponized that shame to push/embarrass Brandon toward that masculine competence he was
supposed to be displaying. As Brandon said, it was his way of “throwing jolts at him” to go over
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with the boys. In that moment, he is being called a fag because he did not like basketball like the
other boys. To Brandon, this was likely embarrassing more than uplifting him to feel motivated
to play. Those words, telling him to go be a cheerleader, go be a girl since he was acting like one,
communicated to Brandon that he was not sufficiently masculine. Juxtaposing that with his
interest in the arts, Brandon understood/believed that was the case, that to his stepfather, he was
not just acting feminine, he was doing “gay kids” things, yet another swipe at his masculinity.
The second oppression is here, where Brandon was being told that the things like singing and
dancing which came naturally to him did not just make him less masculine, it made him gay,
establishing a wedge between that which made him happy and his stepfather’s approval.
Ironically, in Brandon’s words, this push toward masculinity made him discover his gayness.
The push for him to align with traditional ideas of masculinity brought him to a realization that
he really did not know what it was and set upon searching for it.
I think I was really just, um, enamored with, with guys that were bigger than me…I’ve
always been attracted to other guys that had seemingly had more masculinity than I did.
So it would be like, that was a draw for me, um, or at least when I was younger. And then
it came from the point where, Oh, you’re, you know, you’re more masculine to me, so,
you know, I want to be like you. And so it became this fascination with, you know, I
want to be more masculine, but instead of me being more masculine, I just started to fall
attracted to, um, traits of masculine men, [and] that became more and more, um, overt,
like, you know, I would do things to be around guys that I felt were more masculine or
whatever. Then it finally got to a point where, um, you know, sexual exploration came,
um, you know, I was just trying to see what they had that I didn’t have. What made them
more of a man than I was?
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While the story of Brandon’s stepfather making him feel like he needed to toughen up might not
be an isolated event that caused him to experience the above, it is evident that it was at least
contributory to it and his discovery of masculinity. His words frame it as exploratory, “what
made them more of a man that I was?” The need/pressure to toughen up resulted in Brandon
needing to understand what this masculinity was that he was somehow missing. Not allowing
Brandon his own definition of masculinity contributed toward his misunderstanding and
curiosity, likely even in the aim to keep the jeers from his stepfather at a minimum. Whatever the
case may be, this situation highlights a few key ideas. Regardless of the need to toughen him up
so he would not be feminine/gay, it still happened. It was inevitable if not innate already, calling
into question the necessity of the practice of this socialization toward masculinity. It reinforces
Butler’s idea that gender is an imitation of that which has no original (1991). Brandon was made
to believe he needed to seek out examples to understand what this masculinity was to emulate it
or at least discover what he was lacking because he was compelled to. The person he was alone
was not enough and had to move closer to his stepfather and his community’s idea of
masculinity, and by extension, blackness. As Woodson and Pabon (2016) asserted, expectations
set upon black gay men often fail to “acknowledge diverse expressions of blackness and
maleness” (p. 57) in search of a typified black superman–a composite of monolithic racial and
gendered stereotypes upon which a standard is set. This experience in Brandon’s story
encapsulates how some of the men in my study were made to understand the expectations of
gender and masculinity were not owned by them, and that persistent pressure to conform to a
larger idea of masculinity would shape their lived experiences.
Marshall is another who experienced this harder heteronormative oppression where his
femininity was forcefully rejected and overtly ridiculed by his peers for it. His experience
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reflects much of Pascoe’s illustration of the fag discourse where the label “fag” is used not in a
sexual sense referring to homosexuality but invoking a gendered punch at his masculinity (2005).
Pascoe (2005) said,
“Fag” may be used as a weapon with which to temporarily assert one’s masculinity by
denying it to others…When a boy calls another boy a fag, it means he is not a man, not
necessarily that he is a homosexual. (p. 342)
For Marshall this is especially appropriate since, in the context this story was offered, he was not
aware of his own gayness yet for it to apply to him in a way that targeted his sexuality, but it still
had an effect on him. Marshall recalled,
I knew my issue coming up was that I was always called punks, sissies, and fags…
always. And I couldn’t understand why, like what did I do wrong? And I remember when
I was in, I was probably in middle school, like fifth, sixth grade. And I remember one
Sunday, we had came [sic] home from church and my second oldest brother was outside
with the little boys in the neighborhood…And I remember that these young boys was
talking about me negatively and I heard them. And the one thing I took away from that,
my brother did not even stand up for me…I couldn’t understand why they were calling
me punks.
As Marshall recalled, he was “always” being called “punks, sissies and fags” but could not
understand why, which highlights a darker and more painful aspect of this masculinity
socialization. The teasing and/bullying by those his own age, in his immediate environment,
othered Marshall, in his view, without any just cause. What is more, he believed his brother, a
member of his family, was complicit in that as well. Marshall expected his brother to defend him
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or intervene, and he apparently did not or would not. As Marshall continued on in this story, he
described the depth of the effect this had on him.
I remember used to almost, used this to think it was the way I walked. And I used to start
paying attention. Like, am I doing something wrong? What have I done wrong? When I
got to middle school, I was thinking about, you know, why people didn’t want to be
friends with me and why they said this about me. And I remember one time I
contemplated, committing suicide as a result of that because it was so, cause I’ve never
dealt with that before. Cause it was nothing that I did. I always tried to be who I was at
that age… All of that was coming to me before I knew who I truly, truly was in my true,
true self. And so that became problematic for me…I was just like every normal kid. I
wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t doing certain things, but I just felt, I don’t know. I just felt
like I was alone in that, and I really didn’t have anybody I can talk to. And I didn’t, I
didn’t try to talk to anybody, but I just almost kind of like suppressing it.
The name-calling made him scrutinize himself because it communicated to him that something
was wrong with him. Others could see it, but not him. To himself, he was “just like every normal
kid” but, Marshall reported, they made clear to him they saw him as a sissy and a fag. Something
less than, something other than, something that was not like them. He had to instead be mindful
and pay attention to how he carried himself and how he acted simply to try to understand why it
was happening. This was obviously painful as it pushed him to contemplate suicide, which again,
is the hallmark of this darker, more harmful oppression. For simply existing how he existed in
his environment, as a black boy to whom those around him read as feminine, he was subjected to
this kind of treatment. Because he was not like other boys, that violation isolated him from
potential friends, and as he discussed, made him feel alone and had to suppress those feelings to
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move on from it. This is all before, as he pointed out, he really knew who he was as a person.
Before even understanding who he was to himself, he was being punished for what he already
was. This is a thread that permeated the stories of the men in their lived experiences as they grew
up under the gender expectations of others around them. What makes Marshall stand out here, is
that the context of his story took place before he understood he was gay. Not so much for the
others.
Self-Discovery and Isolation
Among the discussions of the lived experiences the men had that contributed to their
identity was their self-discovery that happened amid isolation and distance from oppressive
forces in their home environments. Each of the men experienced an early gay discovery where
same-sex feelings emerged during childhood establishing feelings of guilt as it was already
communicated to them that gayness was wrong. Nine of the 10 men communicated that they
were able to accept their gayness and become they men they were at the time of this study once
they were away from the gaze of their family and community members, and this presented itself
in a number ways that often intersected: Separating from their family’s Christian communities
and/or beliefs, learning about gayness in the privacy of their bedrooms. This theme of blooming
the dark were shared occurrences that reportedly enabled them to learn about their sexuality, feel
agency in expressing themselves, and experience the possibilities of a confirmed black gay
identity as they were removed from the anxieties and fears of others discovering their sexuality,
which had implications for their comfort with disclosing their sexuality. Themes from these
findings were consistent with the idea that homophobia was the impetus for feelings of rejection,
isolation, and depression among others, and cause for suppression in expressing sexual identity
and other behaviors due to cultural and religious forces in their environment (Bajali et al., 2012).
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In the theme of religious conflict, perceptions of hypocrisy in the black church influenced a
distancing from formative religious views that problematized gayness in order to come to terms
with gayness. As Loiacano (1989) gay men needed to find a way to validate and integrate the
salient and emerging identities among them, making them intersectional rather than continuously
parallel, and here, separating from oppressive forces and finding belonging elsewhere presented
itself as a means to do so. Finding validation among queer-affirming groups and/or individuals
was another theme that emerged as the men reported finding ways to validate their gay identity.
Representation emerged as another theme, as the men found ways to validate their gay identity
through interacting with black gay-themed media that made black gayness a tangible possibility.
Early Gay Discovery
Each of the men discussed realizing their attraction to the same sex very early in their
lives. The majority recognized feelings for the same sex in elementary school, and others as late
as 12 years of age, suggesting they were developing their gay identities while enduring
heteronormative pressures telling them they could not be gay. This is not something I found to be
surprising given my own experience here,
13
and how introspective the men were made to be in
their early with respect to their gender identity expectations and conflicting expressions in their
early years. Their talk of discovering the sexuality aligns directly with the first stages of the
process of developing a gay identity, which Cass (1979) and Loiacano (1989) asserted is as
follows:
(a) a general sense of feeling different; (b) an awareness of same-sex feelings; (c) a point
of crisis in which an individual realizes that his or her feelings can be labeled as
13
Among those I know personally in the black gay community, this is a common narrative. Even for myself, I
recognized it was an actual thing for me when I was about 11 years old, well into my understanding that it was not
acceptable and being told that I didn’t always act like other boys.
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homosexual; and (d) an eventual acceptance and integration of one’s gay identity.
(Loiacano 1989, p. 21)
Charles, emphatic in his retelling of his story, shared his memory of how and when this process
began to unfold for him.
Wanna know a secret? I knew at 5 years old. There was this one time in kindergarten
where we were going to the bathroom and there was a…I had a friend named Pierre. I’ll
never forget Pierre. Um, we were in the bathroom or whatever, of course the teacher was
a woman, so she didn’t go in the bathroom with us. And Pierre asked me, do I know what
humping is? And I was like, no, what is that? And so, he proceeded to show me what
humping was, and I kissed him. And I remember at five years old in kindergarten being
like “I love little boys,”, well I love… that sounds crazy… I do, I remember at 5 years old
saying that I’m attracted to the same sex. And from then on, I felt like something was
wrong with it because automatically like when it happened, I knew that’s what I was
attracted to. But when it happened, I immediately thought like, this is not okay. Like this
is not what my mother wants. Even at 5 years old, I remember being socialized into this
is not okay. It should be a man and a woman. And so I immediately started to repress it
and that began my whole life journey.
Charles had a vivid awareness that he was different, and that was exposed by this interaction
with his classmate that epiphanized his same-sex feelings and thrust him immediately into guilt,
as he recalled. At 5 years old, Charles reported not just knowing that same-sex attraction was real
and possible for him, but also that he confirmed it for himself, directly in conflict with what he
understood he was supposed to like. As he stated, “I remember at 5 years old saying that I’m
attracted to the same sex. And from then on, I felt something was wrong.” Conversations around
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children and sexuality sometimes fall somewhere in the realm of children being too young to
understand sex and sexuality. However, according to research by Coleman and Charles (2001),
“young people do not wake up on their thirteenth birthday, somehow transformed into a sexual
being overnight” (p. 18). Instead, sexuality is a broad term that encompasses the human
development of sexuality and who we are as human and sexual being including “physiological,
social, biological, and cultural factors” in addition to self-perception, and not just sexual
intercourse (Coleman & Charles, 2001, p 17). Charles’s recollection of this event is reflective of
this, as he was already building the perception of who he was in terms of gender and sexuality at
age 5. It is difficult to know what all might have occurred in this interaction, however, two things
are evident. At 5 years old Charles knew what gay was, regardless if that was accurate for him or
not, and he understood that he could not be it and/or no one could know his truth. At age 5 he
was already carrying the guilt of his gayness. As he stated, he “immediately thought like, this is
not okay…not what my mother wants.” He credited the socialization that he was receiving from
his mother, which told him at least in some part that what he did was wrong according to what he
believed she communicated to him. He knew it was not acceptable to her, and in his interview,
he recalled how she was quite explicit in her disapproval of homosexuality, which explained how
it is indeed possible that he understood homosexuality to be wrong at 5 years old.
It was very explicitly said… In certain, some instances where, um, so my mom, the
business she owned was wedding decorating and wedding coordinating. And so we were
literally around weddings all the time. So it was a lot. Literally like every weekend was
like two or three weddings. Um, and of course, you know, with her being a single mother,
me and my brother helped with everything. And so during the breakdowns and setups and
during the weddings and all those things, [she] was always like, “Oh, make sure you pay
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attention to this. Cause you know, this is really what a man should be doing for his
family.” Or when I wanted to join ballet, I didn’t join an actual ballet company until I
was a junior in high school. So I didn’t get formal training until my junior year. Every
year before that she would literally say, no, I don’t want you to join a company because
there’s a lot of gay men there and I don’t want them to raise you. I don’t want you to be
like them. Yeah. So that, you know, they’re very explicit. Um, and then like any time
something would come on TV, um, because you know… the early 2000s, it wasn’t a lot
of LGBTQ representation on camera. So any time something [gay] would come on TV, if
they even just mentioned that or two men kissed, she literally would be like, “that’s
disgusting” and change the channel. Um, and so I grew up with that. Like I, I grew up
with hearing my mother say “ew” every time two men were together and changing the
channel or getting upset and like returning the movie we rented. She would literally
return it and be like, we’re not watching that. That’s not okay.
The prevalence of heteronormativity and the dismissal of homosexuality in disgust were among
the explicit signals that Charles received from his mother that communicated to him that
homosexuality was something he should/could not be. As his words convey, he literally
witnessed his mother react in disgust and rebuke of homosexuality, and it stands to reason to
suggest this was among the type of behaviors and ideas that told him his mother would not like
that he liked boys. He saw how she reacted to it, and he apparently was able to transfer that on to
himself. The undercurrent of the expectations of gender, in his view from his mother, told him
that he needed to keep that part of him hidden away inside for fear of whatever might come from
it. As he understood from his participation with her wedding planning tasks, “it should be a man
and a woman” and he had plenty of explicit examples of these kinds of unions, which he
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believed his mother reinforced to him–“make sure you pay attention to this. Cause you know,
this is really what a man should be doing for his family.” This could mean that for most of his
life, from childhood on, he had a budding gay identity, and a pseudo-sexual event that confirmed
the real potential of his gayness, all the while receiving messaging that told him the person that
was emerging from within him had to change or had to be suppressed. In his view, the
expectations and that which socialized him to see heterosexuality as the norm had a suppressive
effect on him. From his words, this had a great impact on his life. On his feelings about having to
keep such a secret, anxiety and fear was a major part of it. He said it was,
…a little bit scary. Being in my hometown up until I graduated high school, that anxiety
was very crippling, like very, very crippling because I mean, it’s a small town, so, you
know, anything I do with… anything I say, anywhere I go, people are going to know.
And my mother…everybody knew her. So yeah, that, that anxiety again was very
crippling. It stopped me from doing and pursuing a lot of things that I truly wanted to do
and speaking up for myself and advocating for myself as a young kid. Because I was like,
well, I’m just going to leave that alone because then everybody’s going to think or know
that I’m gay or whatever, like with ballet, like I truly wanted to be a ballet dancer. That’s
still one of my dreams. And I’m mad that I wasted so many years of not being in a studio
because there were so many gay men that were in there and she didn’t want me around
that. So I didn’t advocate for myself. I didn’t say, Hey, it doesn’t matter. Cause I’m gay
anyway.
Charles’s words reveal the nature of his environment compounded his need to suppress his
gayness and things that might call his sexuality into question, augmenting his anxiety. It is
evident that the gaze within the small town he resided in was also a contributing force for him to
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stifle parts of himself. As he pointed out, the specter of his gayness making itself known to his
mother made him feel limited in what he could and could not do or “everybody’s going to think
or know that [he’s] gay,” ultimately through the assumption of activities or expressions
connecting to localized gay stereotypes. Again, femininity in men in characterized as a potential
signifier of gayness. To him, it was evident others around him believed ballet made him gay,
because other men who did it were perceived as gay too. But the loss here is really in the
sacrificing of the opportunity of his passion, which he reported was dance. The potential of him
being outed so to speak to his mother, as he said was crippling, anxiety-inducing, and “scary.” I
would argue that this sheds light on a mindset that is evident among the data as well, the
responsiveness to “what are people going to think” as a meter for stifling one’s expressions and
choices. In Charles view, the expectations on gender, on black masculinity extended beyond the
home, and is omnipresent abroad. His mother finding out appeared to be the central part of that
anxiety, with more weight given to that, beyond just people in the community finding out. The
conflict here raises what Rasmussen argued with respect to embracing gayness with cultural
connectedness is at risk. The immediacy of realizing one’s sexuality is deprioritized or
abandoned when the threat of that disconnected outweighs the benefits of embracing the
difference of one’s sexuality when that conflict is present, and arguably makes integrating a gay
identity into one’s self concept, akin to Loiacano’s framework, less possible. As Charles said
himself, the prospect of his gayness being discovered and the potential danger of that secret
being known kept him from engaging in a part of his identity that others saw as gay, delaying his
integration. Charles’s story here is of course unique to his existence. However, each of the men
connected to the theme of discovering their gayness early amid a conflict of heteronormativity in
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their environment that communicated to them that who they were becoming in their full identity
was unacceptable at least from their early childhood.
The setting of the expectations of black masculinity showed itself in the data to be a
powerful force, particularly with respect to sexuality. However, Ryan’s story highlights the
potential when that force was not necessarily exerted to heteronormalize. Ryan, who was among
the more openly gay participants, reported having no fear expressing himself as a gay child
because homosexuality and femininity within him was not problematized. Ryan shared,
Pretty much, uh, my mom right now, and growing up…she did not care, or, it wasn’t a
concern that her son was gay. You know what I’m saying? Because this is not something
that just happened in high school or that happened in college. Uh, she actually caught me
and my friends. We were in 1st and 2nd grade, you know, playing around with each
other. Growing up, the image or being ridiculed that being gay is wrong, that was not a
topic in my mother’s house. But when I lived with my grandmother, my grandmother had
just always talked about, you know, what is expected for us. And it really wasn’t a
concern for her as well. So yes, growing up. I really didn’t have any problems with
expressing myself, not such as expressing myself as a gay child [sexually], but just being
able to articulate and express in that manner. And as it related to sexuality…it was like,
you know, you’re a child, you shouldn’t be having sex. No, you should be doing these
things. It was from that standpoint, right there. Not so much as the same gender rubbing
on each other, but you seven years old, eight years old, why you doing that, why you
saying that? [It was] inappropriate in general, but not inappropriate because it was gay.
Ryan presents a stark contrast with respect to the suppression of his gayness. To Ryan, his
mother and grandparents not making an issue of his potential gayness communicated that it was
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not a problem, or at least less of an issue than him engaging in sexual activity at his age at the
time. That was supported by his apparent observance of a lack of negativity towards it. As he
said, gayness being “wrong, that was not a topic in [his] mother’s house,” nor his grandmother’s.
Additionally, Ryan did not align as strongly with the type of masculinization experienced at
home as the other men did, and Ryan revealed it was his belief that he could express himself
more freely without that same suppression. Given that Ryan was more open about his sexuality
personally and professionally, it can be argued that the lack of or diminished pressure to
masculinize according to a generalized standard in his home environment was meaningful. It
allowed him a safe(r) space and opportunity to explore his identity and express himself without
the same degree of rebuke and repression the others experienced. Ryan said, “So yes, um
growing up, I really didn't have any problems with expressing myself.” Loiacano raised the point
that conflict within gender role expectations complicate positive integration of gayness into one’s
self-concept. If Ryan represents a control for the interactions at home that minimized identity
expressions that aligned with effeminacy in contrast to the others for whom effeminacy was
problematized, then it stands to reason that those masculinizing interactions erected a barrier that
distanced those men from positively integrating a gay identity as they were made to see gayness
as negative and counter-productive to whom they were supposed to become.
Religious Conflict
Among the men’s the stories was a theme of differing perspectives on religious practices
and beliefs with respect to those that were centered in their childhood as members of black
Christian communities. Nine of the 10 communicated shifts in their religious beliefs and
practices due to their experiences in the black church. Of those nine, seven expressed that they
observed and experienced hypocrisy with respect to the treatment of gayness as a sin, in addition
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to experiencing homophobia as members of their church communities that reinforced the silence
of their gayness. They communicated that adjusting their practice as they got older provided
them more agency to develop their identities with respect to gayness. For example, Fred spoke
about distancing himself from organized religion as a whole, while others found different church
homes that embraced them. Beginning first with Fred, he reported his view of the hypocrisy
within the judgement of gayness pushed him to migrate away from it, which he communicated
moved him closer to his gay identity.
Um, I love the Lord, so, I mean, um... at this point in my life, I believe there’s a higher
power, but I don’t attend anybody’s church because I don’t believe, in the whole church
concept at this particular juncture. Um, but growing up, I believed that God is coming
and he’s going to save you, don’t matter what you do… His damnation [though] if you’re
doing the wrong things...Growing up, I figured, as I said I’m going to hell, but [scripture]
states peace is our understanding… [I saw that] one sin is greater than the other. I don’t
eat pork, but I look at the people, they eat pork. It clearly says that you don’t eat swine in
the Bible, but you see people eating swine. So therefore, if you’re eating swine, then that
means you’re going to hell with me. And I’m all right with that. So that means we’re
going to bust hell wide open together. You and I. Hey, pastor, I see you. We in here the
together. So that makes me have enough peace to understand that you do what you do. I
do what I do, and I don’t owe man, in the physical sense, anything. I owe it to myself to
be who, I am, to be happy. And that’s the goal for me, has always been to make sure that
at this particular point I am happy and I’m happy with who I am. And I’m happy with a
comfortability [sic] of having that, that man around me, that I love that. I remember
officially saying, you know, I don’t believe this anymore when I was like 16. I started
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questioning religion at 15, but I think I hadn’t made the determination that, you know,
Christianity wasn’t really something that was valid until around age 16. When it got to a
point where I could no longer deny to myself that I was gay, it was really, um, a dilemma
because as a child and even as like a young man, like, um, as a preteen, I was, I was very
religious and it was like on the one hand, you know, I wanted to, you know, jack off and
think about boys, but on the other hand, I was like, you know, is God gonna forgive me
for this? So I, so I think, um, that becoming agnostic and letting go of religion, I think
that did bring me one step closer to being able to come out.
In this excerpt, Fred communicated his view what he considered to be hypocrisy in the way those
in the church judged sins, particularly with gayness, which made him change his views and
association with gayness being a sin, and ultimately the church. As he reported, he saw that one
sin was treated as if it were greater than others, as if there were smaller sins like eating swine
(pork) that was acceptable or even normalized, but homosexuality was not extend such grace.
Juxtaposed with his gayness, he apparently understood that he was doomed to hell considering
that, as it was communicated to him, those other sins were forgivable, but his gayness was not.
This connected to what Griffin (2007) argued, that there is a prevalent thread among black
churches where gayness is unduly, perhaps unfairly targeted and problematized in the black
community. It is seen as immoral, perverse, and a threat to the black family, is vilified and
elevated above other threats to the black community (Griffin, 2007). Heterosexual ministers and
community leaders focus on gay men and lesbians in the black community often times instead of
those that are a legitimate physical threat to the survival of the black community and perpetuates
an unwelcoming and shame-filled environment that oppresses and silences gay identities
(Griffin, 2007). Evidently, Fred figured he was “going to hell” for being gay as he said this was
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the belief in his church community with respect to the sin of homosexuality. Would God forgive
his gayness? Inequitably applied judgement of sin communicated to him that his assumed
damnation was questionably authentic. Fred recounted, “I don’t eat pork, but I look at the people,
they eat pork. It clearly says that you don’t eat swine in the Bible, but you see people eating
swine…then that means you’re going to hell with me.” The inconsistency there told him that
there was not really a threat of damnation to be concerned with if others could suggest hell for
violating sins and ignore that concept for themselves, which likely communicated to Fred that
concept was manmade and not divine. If everyone else was committing the same sins, even the
pastor, as he said, “were going to bust hell wide open together.” It is evident that what Fred
called the hypocrisy in the church made him question the nature of the structures in place that
pressured him to see gayness as a negative. It apparently did not matter, the judgement of men,
and eventually the potential judgement of God, particularly so when the inevitability of his
gayness presented itself. As Fred said, he could no longer deny his attraction his gayness, which
at the time conflicted with his faith, and letting that go brought him “one step closer to being able
to come out.” Key here was the shame and feelings of doom associated with his faith that Fred
was able to detach from. This was a barrier that kept him from being able to embrace his gayness
on his own terms and embrace himself as a whole. As Griffin argued, “the present message of
homosexuality as immoral also creates an inescapable feeling of unworthiness and low self-
esteem in African American lesbians and gay men” (2007, p. 99). By removing himself from the
environment and practices that created his inner conflict was what pushed him closer to
integrating his salient and gay identities.
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I Found My Tribe!
Jackson’s recollection of his experience within the black church, as he called it, further
underscores this belief among the men the disengaging and/or distancing themselves from forces
within the church community that suppresses homosexuality allowed them to thrive. Consistent
with my revised conceptual framework, Jackson’s movement to a more accepting church
community reportedly helped him validate his identity as a gay man. On how he reconciled his
faith in light of the conflict presented with his sexuality, Jackson recalled maintaining the
practice of his faith, but does so within an queer-affirming community that welcomed him and
countered what he referred to as bigotry, which he recognized this what pushed him away.
Jackson recalled,
The simple answer, I still have, quote, unquote, what is known as the faith of my father.
My relationship with the black church, for better or worse–And I can make arguments for
both…. It’s not, they–I was one that they lost. Um, in the Episcopal church, we say, you
know, nobody’s really a cradle Episcopalian. It’s something that you’re just like, you
find. You stumble into the episcopal church. All are welcome in the church. Um, But I, I
grew up AME African Methodist Episcopal. Um, as I told you earlier, I’m the son of an
African Methodist preacher, the grandson of, you know, all down the line. Though, I
don’t have the connections with that church anymore, largely because of how they treat
LGBTQ youth, um, and black [gay youth]. Oh, well there’s bigotry. There’s no nice way
of saying it. When I stumbled into the Episcopal church, I found as they say you found
home. It was outside of the fact that when I went into seeing they had wine and beer right
there for me, I was like, man, this is the Lord telling me, this is my home. I found my
tribe! But I feel that in my early twenties, the principal church has this group called
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Integrity. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it. It’s an open and affirming. Um, it’s an
open and affirming LGBTQ+ group that is in the church that I forget the gospel that says
walking, living with integrity. Um, that’s where it came from. And this particular group
granted the old white Queens just kind of sorta took me in and was like, Hey, here is like,
you’re, it’s okay to be you. Like, God loves you. You don’t have to like this layer, this
skin, this box that people put God in. And that’s probably a better way of putting it.
People put God in that box and God doesn’t live within a box. Right? Like he, she, it,
whatever you want to call it, you have to remove your face from that box to truly
experience the presence of God. So my youth, if some say, am I still a Christian? Yes.
They’re like, are you a practicing homosexual? Girl, yes! I walked in faith of light and
love and walk with Integrity. When I removed that box that the AME church… when you
remove that casing and you understand the original text, because what we’re all reading
and what we’re all interpreting are translations upon translations upon translation. When
you get back into the original text, holy shit! And you’re like, that’s not what it says at
all! To answer your question, and that was the short answer, am I still a person of faith?
Yes. Yes. Has that journey been a road? Brother, it has been a long bumpy way to
Damascus, but you know, you fight with your angel and you’ll get your blessing.
He said, “I was one that they lost.” As he discussed his experience on reconciling his faith with
this sexual identity, Jackson was very clear in pointing to what he perceived as bigotry toward
black LGBTQ+ youth as contributory to his decision to find a more affirming church that
allowed for his faith and his gayness to coexist. He said, “Am I still a Christian? Yes…are you a
practicing homosexual? Girl, yes!” As he said “I walked in faith of light and love, and walk with
Integrity,” which I believe is a double entendre to speak to his integrity in light of his acceptance,
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and his literal church community named Integrity. The openness and more liberal nature of the
group that welcomed him in is what Jackson communicated drew him in. Their affirming
messages and deconstruction of what Jackson implied was interpretations that people made of
the “original text” of the bible was what communicated to him that traditional barriers to
homosexuality that he recognized from his background were no present with Integrity. Further,
they interacted with him in a way that connected with him. As Jackson said, “I found my tribe!”
Jackson’s recollection of his experience here highlights the core of the conflict the men reported
when discussing practicing their faith as Christians in light of messaging that told them their
homosexuality was not simultaneously acceptable. In those spaces, to be welcomed, a portion of
who they were had to be diminished as a condition of acceptance within their religious
communities, yet alternatives existed. The alternative to being shunned existed. The alternative
to staying an unwelcoming environment existed. The ability to still connect to their religious and
cultural families while being their authentic selves existed, and as Jackson’s story represented,
the opportunity finding that alternative presented itself. Potentially, Jackson would not have to
hide who he was authentically to keep “the faith of [his] father, the connectivity and sense of
belonging he had, which is something Rasmussen (2004) asserted is a reason why some gay
black men do not ascribe to the destinational-coming out discourse. Rather than declare one’s
sexuality and risk disconnection from cultural and religious identity affiliations as a result,
declaring gayness is all but abandoned in these spaces (Rasmussen, 2004). Jackson is among
those who reconciled to a degree of comfort their religious beliefs and their sexuality and was
out in his private and professional life. It is evident that finding validation and belongingness
here is what contributed to that. Others who similarly identified with Jackson’s story indicated
possibilities of coming out in their professional environments, if they were not out already,
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suggesting that resolving the religious and cultural conflict they might have with their gayness
interacted with their decision to disclose their sexuality.
Blooming in the Dark
Another theme that emerged as the men discussed coming to terms with their sexual
identity was their often-secret undertakings to learn about their sexuality and who they were
becoming as gay men to accept themselves as gay men amid counter narratives in their
environment. Referring again to Loiacano’s (1989) framework on integrating a positive gay
identity, coming to terms with one’s sexuality was paramount as it aligned with trajectory toward
coming out. As it was told, each of the men had a variation of this experience of learning where
they turn to a specific method or tool used to come closer to a positive gay identity, which
included gay-themed representations in media including print literature, film, and television, that
which could found on the internet. Additionally, some turned to therapy, others found mentors,
and as consistent with the above theme, others turned to religion. Nevertheless, it was
consistently reported among them that their personal journeys of self-discovery happened behind
closed doors, away from the gaze of their families and communities, and is part of an emerging
process toward owning their gayness. While each story is unique, Brandon and Eric spoke
candidly about their experience learning about their gayness in isolation away from the gaze of
their family, utilizing gay media as a confirmatory tool for their identity. Brandon placed his
experience with this in the context of his anxiety surrounding others around him learning of his
secret, which caused him to normalize the hiding of his sexuality, setting the stage for the
exploration himself in the dark. Brandon recalled,
At 11, 12, 13, 14, I was struggling to be who I was, you know, without having social
[support]…Outside of social constructs, I started coming to who I’m supposed to be. [I
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experienced] all the time, all the time. A lot of anxiety. Much anxiety actually. Um, cause
everything I did…when I got it old enough to use the word, I’ve spent a lot of time doing
clandestine activity that, you know, people wouldn’t know about [me being gay]. So if
anybody was to hear about it, I would definitely be extremely, extremely, extremely
ashamed of what it was that I did only because I know that, umm, I wouldn’t be, um, I
wouldn’t be seen in the same light. [I was fearful of people finding out]…that I had, uh,
attraction for the same gender. And at that time, it probably was just attraction. More than
anything sexual, it was just I was attracted to guys. So, what, what that meant, you know,
for me and what that meant for the status of my family and what they, what they knew. I
mean, there was a younger times when I, I was, so… I cared about what they think [sic].
And then it was like, when I was 15 and I was like, I really don’t give a crap. Like, this is
how I feel, you know, [started to] kind of accept me for who I am. Um, so I kind of went
to two different seasons. Um, but the early season was always like, I don’t want anybody
to know to that. You know, I don’t want to have to explain, you know, why I’m different
than other guys. Why I’m not talking about having a girlfriend. Why I’m not.. You know,
there’s so much, you know, they just, it was a lot.
“A lot of anxiety” is what Brandon pointed to to describe the way he felt about his family
learning he was attracted to the same gender, and that prompted him to keep his sexuality to
himself lest they find out to deleterious effect. As he said, the uncertainty of what they meant for
him and for his family contributed to his understanding that he needed to keep to himself about
his sexuality to avoid shame, and to avoid changes in how people would perceive him. The
anxiety communicated to him that his sexuality needed to remain hidden and pushed him to
perform “clandestine” activities to mask his gayness. In Brandon’s story, the fear, anxiety, and
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isolation that he experienced being “outside of social constructs” were central to his experience
along to way to coming to terms with who he was, and was what each of the men communicated
experiencing to some degree. As evident, Brandon did not have security in knowing he had a
safe place to discuss his gayness widely because of the anxiety shrouded in “what happens if?”
Concerns about himself, his family’s reputation, and pressure to emulate the experiences
commensurate with other boys, like having a girlfriend, were all things to communicated to him
that he was not safe in discussing or exploring his gayness, relegating it to the darkness of his
bedroom. This experience aligns with Amideos’ commentary on black gay identities being lived
in marginal spaces or what he called borderlands (Clisby 2020). His argument highlighted how
black gayness exists in a shadow realm, or in the borderlands of marginal social-cultural, and
Brandon literally spoke to how he believed he was outside of social constructs, assuming he
meant a heteronormative construct. Those forces combined told Brandon that the only place he
could comfortably be himself and walk in his truth was in the privacy of his bedroom, in the that
shadow realm that Amideo spoke to, where he could explore his gayness without shame, where
he bloomed in the dark. Brandon recalled in his interview how, in the privacy of his bedroom, he
was able to move toward comfort with who he was becoming and lived out fantasies with gay
media, specifically a male catalog that depicted male body in a way that allowed him to
familiarize with his own gayness. Brandon said,
Um, so you’re probably gonna laugh when I say this, but, um, the gayest thing that could
probably have been imaged for me when I was growing up was the international male
calendar…It was a catalog. Boy, oh boy, oh boy, did I have my fantasies with that
international male catalog. I’m just recalling it. I’m like, Oh my God. It was crazy. Some
young men, I guess, that are growing into their sexuality are hiding like Hustler and like
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Playboy. I’m hiding international male somewhere under my, my bed.*laughter* I guess
it cosmetically made me feel like…two things, um, that gayness in its greatest sense is
white. White male and chiseled. You know, um, body conscious. Um, and that
necessarily isn’t for black folk, because up until that time, I didn’t recognize any type of
black examples of gaydom, I guess, if you will. It was always, you know, white male
chiseled. So that was kind of like my thought about it and it wasn’t until I got older that I
realized, oh, well, black guys can be, you know, gay too. And, or, you know, can have the
same attraction as well.
Brandon’s use of his international male catalog was his tool that enabled him to explore his
gayness in the privacy of his bedroom away from the gaze of his family and move him closer to
comfort with his sexuality. As he commented, the catalog to him was equal to what other boys,
heterosexual boys of his age and time might have had with Hustler or Playboy magazines that
thrust the womanly figure in the faces, but in Brandon’s case, it was men being shown in a
similar fashion. It allowed him further access to explore his sexuality and did so in a space that
was not subject to potential scrutiny. However, he still knew to hide it “under his bed,”
signifying a sort of calculated risk doing so. This may be a safe space, but he is still not
completely free to do so–again, that “what happens if” factor is still in play. Regardless, the
opportunity to explore himself is larger than the risk of someone finding out in his controlled
environment. While Brandon acknowledged it allowed him to play out his sexual fantasies and
curiosities, it also communicated to him his gayness as a black man was limited. To him, the
visuals of “white and chiseled” physiques told him that gayness did exist in the world, but in a
limited capacity that was not necessarily for him specifically as a black man. In his words, it
“necessarily isn’t for black folk” as he pointed to a black examples of “gaydom.” That
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communicated to him that gayness, even in that enclosed space, was still out of reach in some
ways, and this his experience inside his bedroom was a microcosm of the world abroad that
reaffirmed that blackness was not intersectional with gayness in a way that was acceptable. As
Brandon reported, it caused him to view gayness something that was linked to whiteness and
took on a specific form with respect to desirability, and he did not have that, at least at that time.
That implied, and his words confirmed, that seeing black gayness as something positive,
attainable, and desirable, and was something that he had to work towards, but also
communicated to him that the outside world did not see black men as gay either. As he
commented about his own journey, it took Brandon well into adulthood to believe that an
outwardly gay identity for him as a black man was possible beyond closed doors. At any rate, the
exploration and discovery of gayness in a safe space was essential for him to move toward a
black gay identity and is something that the others noted was part of their experience in
achieving some comfort with who they were. Brandon started his journey with print media, while
others had more technological means.
Eric also identified with the theme of discovering his gayness in the darkness, doing so in
the privacy of his bedroom with access to a wealth of resources on the internet, educating
himself despite fear and knowing what he was doing would be perceived as wrong. In his story,
Eric was reported that he was fully aware of how his family viewed gayness as a negative, which
was how he knew to take refuge in his private space, where he was able to take advantage of the
internet. This is one aspect of the data where there was variance among the men with respect to
age. Those who were coming of age near the year 2000, who are in their early 30s and under, had
much more accessibility to gay-themed media, opposed to those of whom were adults when the
internet came became more available at home. For Eric, it allowed him an educational landscape
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of sorts that opened up a taboo world to his fingertips, allowing him to explore gayness in the
world without leaving his room that ultimately helped him come to terms with his own gayness,
despite believing it was wrong. Eric recalled,
And then I discovered the internet…I swear to you, it was like the entire world had
opened up in my face and I didn’t know what to do…it became my own extracurricular
education, if you will. I was researching, I was reading, I was looking in places I
shouldn’t have been going as a 12 year old. And it was more of this intrigue or interest
before I realized that it was really more of my sexuality that was coming into, into
play…And so from there it just became this extreme obsession of mine to just learn more
about it, knowing really well that I couldn’t say anything about it. So for me, the internet
was my way of learning about it in secret…I had a very clear concept of being gay was
something that was wrong…I was scared. I was really scared. It felt like, you know, like
Alice in Wonderland going deeper down the rabbit hole. And before she even got to the
rabbit hole, she was kind of like curious in a way and then just kind of fell in at first. It
was that, ‘Oh, this is something interesting.’ Now I’m really trying to plunge deeper into
it and I couldn’t stop myself. And I knew it was probably something I should not have
been doing. Like I knew it was wrong to sneak on internet at midnight, staying up to 1, 2,
3, 4 o’clock in the morning before a school day, just looking at honestly porn. And for me
it was a behavior that I couldn’t stop, and it felt like it was the right thing to do, knowing
that it was the wrong thing socially. So I knew I had to always clear my browser history. I
knew I had to wait for everyone was to be asleep. I knew not to log on and with the dial
up modem after a certain hour because it was hella loud...I had to ask for DSL…so I
could be on without anybody even knowing it. And didn’t have to worry about
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unplugging the phone. It was me enabling my own addiction if you will. And, um, yeah, I
just knew for a fact that I could not let anybody find out. It’s like, what if I got kicked out
of the house? Cause that was definitely a thing that was happening at the time. It was
very, I guess, topical that gay kids were being kicked out of the house and being rejected
from their families. There were TV shows and things about it around that time. I think
this was like about 2000, 2001. And I didn’t want that to be me. Like I couldn’t imagine
like what my life would be like if I didn’t have my sisters and my family around me and I
was, I was scared. I was absolutely scared out of my mind. And I was always looking
behind my back, making sure I had cleared my history.
“It felt like it was the right thing to do, knowing that it was the wrong thing socially” captures the
thrust of Eric’s recollection of using the internet to learn about his gayness while living in an
environment that communicated to him that what he was doing was wrong. Before discussing the
role of the internet, it is important to highlight the context in which his use of it took place. Eric
was explicit in communicating the fear that surrounded his discovery, which compelled him to
keep his actions secret. As it was communicated to Eric, being gay was punishable, and he
pointed to images on television and stories of other gay youth being ostracized from their
families and removed from their homes because of it. As it he recalled, “it was very…topical that
gay kids were getting kicked out of the house… and [he] didn’t want that” to happen to himself.
He reported being fully aware that his family did not approve of homosexuality and that made
him “scared out of [his] mind” and cautious to not let someone find out his truth. That fear and
anxiety was what he attributed to needing to keep his actions secret, but as it was expressed, the
emergence of his gayness was inevitable if not uncontainable. It is evident that the need to
validate who he was, again consistent with Loiacano’s (1989) framework, was more prescient to
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him than the threat of rejection. As such, the internet presented itself to Eric as a safe option to
explore his gayness while maintaining his veil of secrecy. To him, it was an opportunity to learn
and understand his sexuality was emerging beyond a mere curiosity. Again, he said, “it was more
of this intrigue or interest before I realized that it was really more of my sexuality that was
coming into, into play… knowing really well that I couldn’t say anything about it.” It is evident
that Eric did not have anyone to safely discuss this part of his life, so the internet became the
source of his support, amid anxiety and paranoia. He said, “I was always looking behind my
back, making sure I cleared my history.” Central to Eric’s excerpt here is the danger of discovery
that caused him to be reticent with respect to revealing his sexuality. All but one of the men
recounted similar stories where they understood walking in their truths came with potential
consequences and chose to walk in what Aimdeo referred to as the shadow realm, since walking
in the light was less optional (Clisby, 2020). This, again, is consistent with Rasmussen’s (2004)
point that gay people of color experience less agency in coming out as it may compromise their
cultural connectedness, and in Eric’s case, as he believed, his safety. This could perhaps extend
to the professional world as well. At any rate, the internet is what Eric pointed to that allowed
him to confirm his gayness and taught him to be gay amid the threat of loss and move closer to a
positive gay identity despite the fear.
Representation Matters
Within this finding of self-discovery, representation of black gayness presented itself as
strong catalyst that made gay identity for these black men as something tangible amid beliefs that
it was not. Earlier in this chapter, images of black men in feminine and/or gay themes were used
to communicate to the men what kind of men they were not supposed to be. However, seven of
the men explicitly pointed to gay black representation during their periods of discovery as
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seminal, confirming to them that gayness included them as well. For example, Sean, who was
coming of age in the 1980s, was candid in his explanation of his perspective that black men are
given rigid expectations for the kind of men they can be, similar to what has been previously
described. In his story he referred to homophobia in the church and the black community
upholding a particular image of the black man while shunning others. Our conversation turned
toward recent representation of black queerness, particularly RuPaul’s Drag Race, which in his
words was slowly chipping away at the structures that keep that rigid image of black men in
place for this current generation. For himself, Sean credited black gay authors writing literature
for black gay audiences as transformative. Sean commented,
I’m glad that he (RuPaul) brought that to TV because I wish I would’ve had all of that
when I was growing up to let people know that–children of color that, hey, it’s okay. We
are out there. And when I finally saw and there was positive [gay] black men, I was like
oh my God, thank you. Oh, I know who helped me. Do you remember the author E. Lynn
Harris? Oh yes. It was his books. It was his books that helped me to become, to get to
acceptance. That’s who did it. He and [James Earl Hardy’s] B-boy Blues… when I got
ahold of those books in the late eighties, that’s what, uh, kind of turned, it started turning
the pages for me.
Sean put it directly, “that’s who did it” as he pointed to black gay authors and their literature
helping him accept himself as a gay man. It is evident in his words that there was a lack of black
gay images around him in his youth. “When I finally saw and there was positive [gay] black
men” illustrates that likelihood, and consistent with this theme of discovery, black gayness was
out of reach to all but one of the men, and Sean is among that group. While he may not have
gone on to elaborate what specifically made that happen for himself, it can be surmised that
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those works communicated to Sean that there was a black gay community out there even if it was
invisible to him. B-boys Blues featured stories of black gay men living in New York City, and
it’s evident that the lived experiences described within resonated with him on some level.
Both Joshua and Eric echoed this exact sentiment with them both commenting on the
same sources of black gay media doing for them what those authors did for Sean. Eric elaborated
further how black gay film and television deconstructed preconceived notions he had that
problematized black gayness for himself, and upon doing so made him see a black gay identity
as viable Eric recalled,
So I started looking at [RuPaul’s] Drag Race. I started watching and learning about, you
know, what it means to be gay. A lot of that started in 2005, 2006. Well, before that
though, it was a TV show called Noah’s Arc and it was the first black gay sitcom on
television, on Logo TV. And it spoke to me so much that I would sneak, well, I was
joining a fraternity at the time and when I was supposed to be doing things with them, I
would kind of pretend like I wasn’t available so I could watch the next episode on Logo. I
mean, it was art. And it spoke to me in ways that something never had… that there was
some viability in being a black gay man, that there was some value in what I’d been
taught had no value and that you could still be successful. You could still have a positive
life. You could still have a family in all the ways that people said that you couldn’t. So it
made it real. It made it possible. And seeing that diversity of black gayness made me start
to break down those barriers that I had up. Um, but over time actually having to live the
experience, did I start to realize that you’re creating a barrier there where there shouldn’t
be one. So I started making new friends. I started talking to people. Started seeing their
experiences, and kind of going out and seeing what the life was actually like. And so
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between [age] 20 and 32 was a complete difference in realizing that, no, there is value in
the way people have become. So it took a bit of a learning experience for me to figure
that out.
The representations of black gayness in media that Eric experienced are what he communicated
helped him to accept his identity as a black gay man. As he said “it made it real. It made it
possible.” In Eric’s view, the characterizations of black gayness challenged the dominate
narratives he said he was taught that conditioned him to believe that his being gay men he could
not meet his ideas of success or realize his aspirations for a family of his own, among other
things. Moreover, as Eric said, it spoke to him in ways that other media did not, which signaled
there was something specific about the representation of that black gayness that Eric evidently
needed to move closer to integrating his identities. This is consistent, again, with Loiacano’s
argument on identity integration (1989). He argued that in integrating a gay identity with another
salient one, finding ways and means to simultaneously validate both identities facilitated a sense
of belonging that broke down feelings of isolation (Loiacano, 1989). As Eric’s words indicated,
media like Noah’s Arc and RuPaul’s Drag Race that prominently featured black gayness or the
realities thereof were impactful for integrating identities. Eric communicated experiencing this as
a deconstruction of the perceived mental barriers that blocked him from seeing black gayness as
something positive and respected. He credited those representations in media as essentially to
seeing the world around him expressed through a lens that he could identify with, and as he
described, it was transformational.
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Identity in the K-12 Professional Environment
Responses given by the men in the study revealed that due to a persistent expectation that
disclosure of their gayness may result in some conflict or consequence, their agency to
authentically express themselves in their K-12 contexts in response to their lived experiences is
limited and measured overall. An initial assumption made in my original conceptual framework
stated that authentic expression in the K-12 environment would be impacted by one’s personal
choice of disclosure and interactions with specific components of their professional
environments, such as school culture would influence their choice of disclosure there. The
interviews of the men revealed that school culture is less of an influence than originally thought;
instead, their perception of it is. Irrespective of geopolitical positionality or perceived
institutional allyship with the queer community, each of the men revealed in their own way that
their choice of disclosure is specific to their own personal feelings and experiences from their
past, rather than direct inputs from their K-12 environments. Further, their choices appeared to
depend upon how they perceived anti-gay themes from their past, gender expectations, gay
stereotypes, etc., to be present in their work environment. To quote Ferfolja and Hopkins,
Individual and community histories of prejudice and harassment construct an expectation
of discrimination. Additionally, dominant heterosexual teacher narratives position the
teacher as a normalised, heterosexualised, respected and authoritative subject; for lesbian
and gay-identified teachers, the subjective position of teacher risks disappearing behind
the presence of their historically derided sexuality, rendering them no longer “teacher,”
but “fag.” (2013, p. 317)
As such, the men can be grouped into three categories that describes how out they are at work
and how enabled they are to bring their authentic identity to their K-12 contexts: (1) Not out at
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work (2) Out at work to coworkers (3) Out at work to coworkers and students. Though each of
the groups share properties that inform their decision, those determinants netted differing
outcomes due to how safe they felt exposing their gayness, considering the potential impact the
representation black gayness may have in their environment. They each expressed similar beliefs
that fault could be found with the unadulterated and authentic selves they reflect in their private
and trusted safe spaces, and in result, their outward identity expressions are calculated versions
of their full identities that shrouds their gayness according to how out they choose to be at work.
It is evident, and consistent with the literature that the men make/made these changes in response
to a number of stigmas that they perceived present in their environments. As Woodson and
Pabon argued, school communities tend to uphold structures of heteropatriarchal norms being
centered in heteronormativity, and with these norms at the center of their histories and
understandings of how the world saw them as gay men, it is evident that the men were
responsive to those same norms as barriers here (2016). Minimizing potential unwanted exposure
of their gayness was a major theme across the stories of the men. This is consistent with Beatty
and Kirby’s (2006) argument regarding those with hidden identities, in this case homosexuality.
They argued that when those with hidden identities found solace in keeping it private to prevent
adverse social interactions, they would seek to keep it hidden to prevent exposure and reaction to
stigma (Beatty & Kirby, 2006). The men reportedly respond to similar expectations of their
identities as black men that they experienced growing up and lived through outside of their K-12
contexts, where effeminacy was viewed as counter to a traditional masculine persona, and was a
key signifying stereotype of gayness. Where applicable, the actions of the men are further
aligned with Brockenbrough’s (2012) argument that black gay men in education settings are
largely silenced due to policing of queerness through regulation of “appearance, attire, gender
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performance, and personal disclosures across contexts to monitor their queerness” (p. 758).
Histories of barriers due to rigid gender roles and negative perceptions of gayness in their
environments contributed to perceptions present in each of the men that their gayness must be
negotiable as a matter of job security and progression, irrespective of policy or geographic
location, ultimately impacting their perceived ability or willingness to represent gayness.
Perceived Community Response to Gayness
In line with Ferfolja and Hopkins’ (2013) argument on expected discrimination informed
by their past experiences, the men’s perceptions and observations of anti-gay attitudes in their
communities and workplaces, communicated to them to be cautious of disclosing their gayness
as those attitudes and perceptions would bring them undue harm in some way. This was present
among the men in all categories, including those who were more comfortable with their gayness
being disclosed. Nine of the ten men expressed beliefs that reactions to their gayness would
cause harm to their reputation, jeopardize job security, or constrict their ability to do their jobs
due to stigma or anti-gay attitudes. Consistent with Beatty and Kirby and Brockenbrough’s
arguments on minimizing a hidden identity and policing one’s actions and behaviors in response
to potential stigmas that may be present in the face of homophobia, each of the men took steps to
control knowledge of their gayness in their K-12 spaces (2006; 2012). These, again as Woodson
and Pabon argued, are microcosms of the cultures and beliefs of the communities they are
located in, upholding and perpetuating structures of heteronormativity, which would ultimately
mean the same stigmas and prejudices they expect to encounter in K-12 workplace (2016). This
was a consistent theme, regardless of the category of outness they were in. Charles, who has
come out to coworkers and students, best represented this theme with respect his engagement
with role-flexing to conceal his gayness. Bajali et al (2012) described role-flexing as a critical
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practice in which one modifies their outward expressions to blend into surroundings and
environments that were perceived as hostile to homosexuality. They highlighted that role-flexing
and the stigmatization of femininity in men was rooted in masculine gender-roles expectations,
which “value physical strength and aggression and sexual prowess with women and hold
particular expectations of dress, speech, and behavior” (p. 735). This was especially pertinent
when belonging to a critical source-community (family, faith, and in this case, workplace) was
deemed vital and estrangement from it would be credited to recognition of homosexual
stereotypes as indicators of deviance from heteropatriarchal norms (Bajali et al, 2012).
Irrespective of conditional factors inside of their environment at work, all of the men reported
conducting themselves in some manner in various situations at work where they muted their
authentic gay identities to portray what they believed a professional should for a multitude of
reasons with the belief that knowledge of their gayness would be inhibiting to some degree,
responsive to stigma and/or internalized homophobia (Beatty & Kirby, 2006). Ferfolja and
Hopkins referred to this as “splitting the self” (2013, p. 320). This showed up in their clothing
choices, the conversations they engaged in, the methods they employed to distance themselves
from stereotypically gay behavior, often aligning with more general expectations of black
masculinity, again pointing to Brockenbrough’s self-policing of black queerness (2012). Charles
discussed his experience where he recognized that he changed his overall presentation,
mannerisms, and behaviors to disguise characteristics more in line with this authentic self to
portray a more masculine, professional persona, or role-flexing, as he believed his career and
promotion opportunities would be impacted due to how others would respond to him as a black
gay man. In his view, outside beliefs imposed onto black gay men caused him to metacognate on
the potential effect it would have on his reception among his community at large, and the respect
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afforded him in the classroom. As Charles discussed, this was both a subconscious and conscious
act of policing where he instinctively responded to his innate concerns regardless of the actual
quality of the environment. Charles recalled,
I have a couple like quick stories about this. I look at it two-fold, where I have my
administration–because I want to be an administration. You know, I want to, to do the
things that they’re doing. And so I’m always hesitant as to whether or not I should truly
be my full self. Um, because my full self can be a lot sometimes. Like I am very, um, I’m
very inclusive. I’m very, you know, free flowing and it is what it is. And, and I want my
students to be like that too. So I try to make my classroom very inclusive and free
flowing. Um, but I also know that if I showed that side of me in the administrative roles,
then I could be barred from becoming an administrator. They’ll be like, Oh no, he’s…
this is way too much. He does not need to be in administration. Or, you know, um, it
could be whatever people have their own ideas about, you know, black gay men being
principals and assistant principals and all of this. And so, um, I remember when I first
moved here to Georgia last summer, I started the job August 1st and the first three or four
weeks of the job. I was like tense every day. Like my whole body was tense when I
would come home. And I’m like, what is going on? Cause you know, I’m thinking I’m
being myself, I’m in Atlanta. I’m having fun. I’m going out to Sunday fun day. It is what
it is…I’m being my authentic self. And it took some self-reflection to realize that every
time I walk in the school building, I shut all that off and I didn’t realize I was doing it.
Um, I didn’t wear any, uh, anything that could remotely be tied to being gay, whether it
was like a pride pin or my rainbow umbrella, or literally just like walking through the
halls as myself. Cause I got a little swish in my walk every now and then, you know. I
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didn’t do any of that because I was trying to portray this very masculine macho person so
that I wouldn’t be shunned by administrators or run over by students. Um, and, and was
saying that with my students, I’m a little bit more outgoing with them. So I’ve never
mentioned it to of my supervisors. Um, I’m sure they know, but I don’t ever like mention,
‘hey, I’m a gay man here I am to my supervisors, my students’.
Charles made it clear that it was his belief his authentic expressions, which included femininity
and LGBT identifiers, would garner a negative reaction, signaling to him to modify his behavior
and mannerisms to avoid consequence. It was his perception that he would be shunned by
administration and/or be “run over by students” causing him to silence his gayness. He stated
directly that as he started his job at his new school, he felt compelled to portray a masculine
“macho” persona, and hid things like his pride pin and even changed the way he walked. Though
he does not indicate what specifically in his environment prompted him to understand that he
needed to do this, he made enough of an assessment of his context that he was not safe to do
those things, even in Atlanta, Georgia where there is a larger presence of black queer individuals.
In other words, his perception of his environment communicated to him that he needed to role-
flex. Woodson and Pabon argued the school communities tend to uphold structures of
heteropatriarchal norms being centered in heteronormativity, as they are reflective of their
geopolitical environments, so it is reasonable to argue that his beliefs arising from his
experiences living and growing up in a predominantly black community outside of school are
transferred here, where his school community is also predominantly black (2016). It is likely that
because he has already been told in multiple ways his femininity and gayness were not fully
acceptable by his family and his faith community, it was communicated to him in some way that
to be accepted in this space, as a professional in this space, he had to meet a standard that
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silenced his gayness like before, and he complied. This is likely what communicated to him
things projected “gay,” like his “rainbow umbrella” and the “swish in [his] walk” had to go
away. Pointing back to Beatty and Kirby (2006) argument on stigma, for one to be stigmatized,
that of themselves which is to be stigmatized needs to first be seen, thereby making the silence
stigma-inducing traits a solution. As Charles communicated, doing so prevented him from
experience what he expected would be negative impacts not only from his administrators, but his
students as well, being “run over by students,” implying his own belief that his femininity would
deny him respect and perhaps affect his ability in the classroom directly. Not only does his belief
about how his gayness would be received have implied effect that he may not be able to see with
respect to the impact it may have on his future, but it also implies an immediate and perhaps
tangible impact on his classroom performance, a belief that is reflected in the literature. Being
run over by students connotes a loss of respect or a command of his classroom, perhaps signaling
Charles’ belief that his gayness being know would delegitimize his expertise, his presence,
and/or his effectiveness in the classroom leading him to minimize his gayness to uphold a more
“professional” image. This is consistent with what Woodson and Pabon (2016) presented with
concept of Black Supermen, where the construct of a “good” black man aligned with a
“hegemonic notion of black masculinity by embodying heteropatriarchal identity norms” is the
standard by which the men in their study were judged (p. 65). In their words, “these expectations
render Black males who transgress dominant expectations of masculinity invisible or
illegitimate” (p. 68). One of the men in their study who deviated from that norm, was told he was
soft and effeminate thus inauthentic to his students’ idea of a black male teacher. Subsequent to
facing resistance from his students, he attempted to conform to the normative school culture by
trying to project a toughness that was expected from the black men in his environment, an
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attempt at recapturing their respect which ultimately failed (Woodson & Pabon, 2016). Similarly,
Charles acted to preempt this possibility due to his own perception of “people [having] their own
ideas about, you know, black gay men being principals and assistant principals and all of this.”
He communicated that it was his belief, not his experience, that his superiors would think “Oh
no, he’s…this is way too much” in response to his authentic self, as is cause for him to regulate
his identity expressions, even in ways that he did not “realize [he] was doing it.” This is also
consistent with Brockenbrough’s (2012) commentary on black gay men policing and regulating
their queerness that in turn reinforces a fixed idea of black masculinity. At any rate, Charles
actions in role-flexing here highlight a particular challenge that is perceived to have an
immediate impact on their lives of those who hold this belief, ultimately impacting if not limiting
their ability to bring their authentic selves into the classroom.
The concept of needing to express what was considered a nonthreatening professional
image was captured in each of the men’s stories, however, Jackson presented details that
highlighted not only how the past informed how to construct their identity in their K-12
environment, but also how ideals from white heteropatriarchal, gendered expectations bled into
their decisions in their workspaces. Among the interviews with the men was a sense of need to
conform to some standard in their environment and veiled their gayness according to their
environment’s status quo in performing masculine competency, similar to Brockenbrough’s
point on black gay men policing themselves. The previous section in this chapter highlighted
how those expectations were rooted in white heteropatriarchal expectations, and those ideas
carried over in their work environments. Jackson reported those ideas were communicated to him
through the experiences of his family during his childhood and confirmed to him in his present.
His story that elevated history communicating to him to be a specific kind of black man that was
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superior to the stereotype that others projected on to them was the way to succeed, underscoring
his perceived diminished agency to display his authentic self. He commented how this was
taught to him very early,
I was the only black kid in my class, literally in my entire life until I got to college in the
college because I went to Florida State. Um, so perfection, like the expectation was you
must work twice as hard to get half a far…from my parents…Perfection. Uh, you must
control your emotions because your emotions don’t matter. It must be controlled. You
must at all times be logical because if you don’t, you will not succeed. You’re either
going to be angry and they’ll, they’ll discard you as being angry. They’ll discard you as
being a revolutionary. Um, it is best to play the game. Literally. That was my whole
upbringing. Play the game. We’ll make changes from the inside.
When asked to clarify who “they” referred to, Jackson responded,
Yes, that’s white people. Le blanc, en francais! [emphasis added] … So, I’m fifth
generation college-educated, which is rare for black people, especially when you’re in
Southeast Georgia… my mother came with a certain amount of training, um, or is what
you would call back in the day, breeding…her understanding of my grandmother and
grandpa–my grandfather was of darker skin. My grandma passed the paper bag test. So
one went to Spellman. One went to North Carolina A&T. Because back in the day, if you
didn’t pass the paper bag test, the Vanderbilt’s wouldn’t let you in to Spellman. So she
knew based off of the training that my aunt gave her, like, this is what you need. And my
mother, my grandmother, bless their souls…so it was like, this is what you need to
survive. Like dad, we called him the secret weapon. So, he would go and blow up stuff in
front of white people. And then mom would have to go back and calm it down because
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my dad is hood, HOOD! We talking Geechee, South Carolina-made hood. Oh man, like,
so it’s literally two…I come from two separate upbringings…one about how to deal and
function in the white world, the “they”, if you will. Um, that expectation was taught from
very little, like I knew how to tie a tie at seven. Like you must wear tie, you must do this.
You must do that. You must do this, and you will make it. And I hate to say it, but they
were right. Like to this day, I’ll sit in a board meeting and we will be discussing new
board members. And though we are trying to diversify, if they lack the skills that my
parents taught me, they’re overlooked…So that training that my mother gave me, like on
how to live in the gray world and to meet those expectations on how to be
nonthreatening, which is very much, I’ll be honest, one of the things–one of the reasons I
am where I am today is because I’m, quote-unquote, nonthreatening…until you piss me
off!
The essence revealed in Jackson’s story, “about how to deal and function in the white world” is a
belief that manifested itself in each of the stories of them men in their choices to display aspects
of their authentic identities–that there was an omnipresent, gatekeeping, racial force whose
judgement upon them reinforced the identity expectations impressed upon them. Eight of the ten
expressed beliefs and memories similar to those of Jackson, recalling being told to “play the
game” and learning certain methods of policing oneself and succeed through some specific way
of being, including going to college, wear a tie, etc. As Jackson recalled, his ideas were
communicated through his grandmother’s experience, her “breeding” which speaks to a history
and social privilege of being college-educated returning with the knowledge needed “to survive.”
How to be “nonthreatening…logical…controlled” and not be written off as “angry” and a
“revolutionary.” To fit the mold. “Perfection.” Matched with his own words on the survival skills
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his grandmother passed down is his experience communicating his belief, “they were right… we
will be discussing new board members…if they lack the skills that my parents taught me, they’re
overlooked.” This speaks to a cognizance of a necessary presentation one must have, not just as a
professional, but as a black professional, as confirmed to him by narratives in his black history.
All of the men identified with this awareness, in their various contexts, as they either expressed
directly and/or implied an understanding that to have credibility and respect, be accepted within
their communities or classroom, they are vulnerable to judgement and prejudice. In Jackson’s
story, he unequivocally named “white people”, directly pointing to who is not only judging but
gate-keeping. Again, he said there was a set of skills and understandings his family
communicated was necessary for surviving in a white world. I’d argue it’s additionally layered
as black gay professionals. That they must not only invoke professional acumen, but police
themselves according to expectations of black masculine competence as well. A combustion of
racist, heterosexist patriarchal ideals. In general, this would imply that the impulses in the men to
police their identities comes with a genealogy of lived experiences if they align as closely to
Jackson’s story. In the case of the men, Bell hooks argued this directly that the “gendered politics
of slavery” restricted what black men, black people, could be as defined by a white norm, here in
the context of the workplace and a perception of it being regulated by a white, dominant (2004,
p. 3; William & Sides, 2010). In short, there is a history and a present that communicated to them
that silencing parts of their authentic existence is the right thing to do, so it stands to reason
suggesting this arises in silencing their gayness as well, especially given the lived experiences of
the men that already told them their gayness needed to be hidden for sake of acceptance
(Brockenbrough, 2012).
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Ryan encapsulated another belief among the men that kept from them representing their
gayness to their students with respect to the community’s perception of it. He and five other men
spoke negatively about the appropriateness of discussing matters of sexuality with their students,
ultimately discouraging them from opening up about their sexuality based on how others might
respond to them doing so. Ferfolja and Hopkins (2013) wrote because gayness is subjected to a
critical gaze, being publicly discussed and analyzed, it is required to be silenced in school
contexts in favor of compulsory heterosexuality LGBT teachers, and Ryan demonstrated that in
his story.
You have to be mindful of ‘now you trying to push your views onto the children.’ So, it’s
one of, it’s one of those situations that they’ll be like…a little girl asked one day, like she
said, ‘Are you gay?’ I said, ‘Well, it depends on what gay are you talking about. I said
the, uh, the gay–cheerful, happy–I’m gay all day, every day. But the gay, such as like
grown folks, gay. Then, that’s not a conversation I can have with you. And they’re very
respectful because they’re elementary children, you know what I’m saying? So, would
you think they should even know about tops and bottoms and verse and all that stuff?
That’s very inappropriate.
Like the participant referred to in Ferfolja and Hopkins’ findings, Ryan exhibited “an explicit
understanding that discourses determining professional conduct do not allow for sexual diversity
(p. 320). “You have to be mindful of ‘now you trying to push your views on to the children’” is
what Ryan said as he invoked the comments that others might say about his discussing his
sexuality with the students, pointing to why he believed it was inappropriate for him to do so.
Something in the response he communicated he expected to receive told him others would have a
problem with him bringing gayness to the children which may ultimately be a reflection of his
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own perception what should be modeled for the students with respect to sexuality. Aside from
what others might think, it was his belief that it was “not a conversation” he could have with the
students, “would you think they should even know about tops and bottoms and verse and all that
stuff?” On one level, it could be that it is just not his desire to discuss what he believes is
sexually explicit. However, I would argue that Ryan’s choice regardless of the intent, responded
more to social pressures that exalted heterosexuality as the dominant discourse in schools by
blocking his own ability to challenge that. His view on the appropriateness of conversing about
his gayness, context aside, arguably perpetuated its inappropriateness by continuing to keep it
silenced, inviting insight into Woodson and Pabon’s point on schools upholding and perpetuating
structures of heteronormativity, and Kumashiro’s argument that in a multitude of ways, school
cultures perpetuate heterosexist othering that marginalizes a school’s denizens whether
advertently or inadvertently (2000). Regardless of veracity, Ryan’s assessment of the
community’s perception of gayness told him to not engage in the conversation on sexuality, and
his compliance reinforced that perception that gayness is should not be invited in causing him to
reproduce the structures that render black gayness invisible. Ryan pointed to his gayness as
something that “grown folks” engaged in and appeared to validate it gay existing in the same
context as him when it was removed from the sexual definition of it. Though it may be
distancing from the having the conversation with the student, it ultimately revealed a belief
reproduces what should and should not be discussed and when it should be discussed about
gayness, and barring that topic from the school context only allowed the dominant narrative of
heterosexuality to persist. Brockenbrough argued that black queer teachers are critical in
“disrupting black queer marginality in educational settings” yet are ultimately rendered silenced
by a number of factors including regulating and micromanaging displays of identity (2012, p.
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758). The regulation here being self-imposed, inhibiting Ryan’s agency to open that door of
conversation. That same assessment was present in stories of six of the men who believed their
contexts told them to avoid sexuality disallowed them from being change agents with respect to
their sexuality.
Sean, who is not out at work, was forthright in pointing to his desire to not want his
gayness to be used against him given his proximity to children and stereotypes about gay men,
informing his decision not to come out. On if he would ever come out at his job, Sean remarked,
Oh, no. Never, never. And the reason why is because of the fact that I’m around children.
No, I never would come out and tell my coworkers or anything like that…no, no, because
of the fact that I was around children, because I didn’t want them to ever be able to use
that against me for any kind of reason, if something should arise, you know, they was
like, Oh, well, you know, he’s gay or anything like that. That maybe that goes back to
my, my, um, upbringing in religion, knowing that they would consider that wrong. And
then knowing that society still does not embrace us. Like they say they might be, I think
the society as a whole, they’re not accepting. They’re more tolerant of us but not fully
accepting… And in my opinion, you never know. I think you never know how they will
come at you. You know, parents, whoever, you never know how they would come at you.
Sean makes is clear that he thinks his community, particularly those who align with his religious
experience, would see his gayness as something “wrong” communicating to him that he would
not be free to come out. As he said, “that maybe that goes back to my, my, um, upbringing in
religion, knowing that they would consider that wrong,” and that apparently informed his
concerned about others discovering his gay, that he believed they believe gayness was wrong.
Put in context with his lived experience telling him where he understood hiding his gayness was
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a necessity to avoid rebuke and retain acceptance, it is reasonable to suggest the same impulses
are in play here. In other words, he believed he needed to stay closeted at his workplace for the
same reasons he was not open about his sexuality outside of his workplace. He also pointed to
the uncertainty of how people would react, or conjure some narrative about him to harm him–
“Because of the face that I was around children…I didn’t want them to ever be able to use that
against me…you never know how they would come at you” referring to the sexist stigma that
some carry about gay men and inappropriate relationships with kids (Beatty and Kirby, (2006).
Not only are his perceptions of his community’s beliefs from a religious lens telling him to keep
his gayness hidden, but so are his interpretations of stereotypes and stigmas of black gay men. In
this segment, it is evident that his belief that “society still does not embrace” black gay men
contributed to the signals that told him he needed to keep his sexuality hidden.
Marshall, who is in the “Not out at work” category represents another of these concepts
from consequences disclosure of his gayness is an open door to a slippery slope of effects and
potential what-if scenarios that cements his decision to stay closeted at work. Marshall’s spoke
on how he chooses not to wear certain kinds of clothing and not being alone with students so
that, in connection with knowledge of his gayness, he might preclude rumors of improper
behavior with students. On reveling his sexuality, he recalled,
I never do that. I’m never in the enclosed space with a female or male or a student that I
know there’s gay. Uh, no, ma’am no, no ma’am… I’ve worked too hard to get to where I
am and my reputation and my name, I’m not going to let anybody destroy it, including
myself. I’m going to protect it at all costs. I do not put myself in those predicaments…
That’s why I feel that it’s important for me not to come out. Cause what if a student is
attracted to me like that, you see what I’m saying? Then I will [have] opened up that
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door. I’ve opened up that window and I’m not finna open that up. That’s why I feel as
though I’m not going to tell y’all. I’m not going to tell y’all that I’m [gay] because y’all
not finna come for me… I’ve seen some fine men teachers and especially the ones that
like to go to the gym and we want to wear everything tight. We want our nuts showing,
we want everything showing. See, what you’re doing is you’re giving off too much.
You’re enticing them to come on to you. See, with me, I wear loose…even if I was built
like that, I’m with everything loose cause I don’t want nothing packing. Cause one thing
about black men, we got big thighs and we got big asses. Everything shows. I don’t want
to give off nothing. I want to give off no impression that I’m showing you that even
though that’s what I want to wear, because the student would take that differently. We
need to make sure that we’re not in enclosed space with males or females because, and
we have to watch how we talk to our males and female students because they will take
that and run with it. And that situation that has happened in our building just this year
alone, where female students feel like they’re disrespected, and male teachers can talk to
them any kind of way. And I don’t do that. I do not do that. I have worked too hard for
my name and my reputation. You may not care. And then here, you can lose your
certification. I’m not going to do, um, I have too much to lose, to put myself in that
predicament, that situation. And we, we don’t think like that. And I, and I’ve seen it, not
at our school, but I’ve seen it at other schools.
As he said, “I’m not going to tell y’all that I’m [gay] because y’all not finna come for me,”
representing first that he anticipated danger in using that knowledge of his gayness against him,
and second that this would be a self-inflicted wound that he could control. This establishes an
awareness that among the men in this circumstance, the potential for them to deal with the
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ramifications of their disclosure is solely within their control, illuminating what informs their
propensity to conceal their sexuality. And rather than come out and subject himself to kinds of
consequences he believed followed, staying in the closet at work insulated Marshall from that
consequence. “I’m not going to let anybody destroy it, including myself. I’m going to protect it
at all costs. I do not put myself in those predicaments.” Those predicaments being linked to
improper behavior appeared connected to certain sexualized tropes about black men and gay
men. In Marshall’s story, his what-if is the linked to his observations where in improper behavior
and even attracting students or being accused of attracting students due to his style of dress being
misconstrued as seducing. “What if a student is attracted to me like that…?.” He connected it to
past experiences where he witnessed others being harmed in this exact scenario, where other
teachers dressed in what was construed as suggestive, and as Marshall reported, there is a
heightened potential of this happening to him. Although he placed this in the context of being
alone with a student and wearing certain types of clothing, Marshall linked this to his resistance
to coming out, alluding to a potential belief of his that the scrutiny for him could be increased if
his gayness was known to others. This draws a distinct connection to Rasmussen’s argument on
coming out, that those of disempowered social groups often experience less agency coming out
as it could compromise connectedness, and that choosing to celebrate one’s sexuality is an
unworthy sacrifice given the perceived cost (2004). While Marshall’s example focused on his
concern of being exposed to accusations of impropriety, all the men identified with exposure and
vulnerability to general displeasure with homosexuality as considerations for moderating their
gayness in their workplaces, regardless of their category of outness.
Five of the men provided commentary that revealed among them a belief that black
gayness was not seen as legitimate in leadership roles like Joshua did. Pointing again to the
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perceptions and expectations others in their environment may have on black masculinity and
anti-gay sentiment through persistent stereotypes, Joshua communicated feeling disabled to some
extent in expressing himself because of diminished representation of black gay leadership
attributed to said stereotypes. Others went further to expressed not being able to share any details
of their private life at all. This echoed Woodson and Pabon’s argument that among gender
expectations, behaviors, expressions of standardized masculinity were afforded more authority
and credibility than others (2016). To effect, “these expectations render Black males who
transgress dominant expectations of masculinity invisible or illegitimate” (p. 68). In Joshua’s
story, both that invisibility and illegitimacy were invoked,
I think in some ways, like my, I do have concerns about like moving into administration
and being black and gay. And like, black educators and like, I know some that are gay,
but they’re kind of like…I just don’t feel like they express themselves the same way as
everyone else… Cause I feel like everyone else would be talking about their wife and
kids. And like, I just don’t feel like in some ways being black and gay, like you could. I
would be afraid, sometimes, I am afraid of like moving up and being black and gay. That
doesn’t mean like I won’t, um, like try to move into administration, but it’s just a
different, I don’t know. I just think administration is a little bit different than just
teaching…I don’t know, it’s just scary to me. I just like to say like the like, Oh yeah, me
and my partner and he did this or whatever. And I dunno, it’s just, I guess my concern is
if it’s because I haven’t been represented, um, before. And so yeah. My concern is having
to be that person just, I guess, openly out as an administrator.
In a few different ways, Joshua expressed his concern about potential ramifications of the
opinions and beliefs of others being imposed onto him as a black gay man, in his view
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constricting his path to becoming an administrator. Bolstering his perspective are what he
pointed directly to, black men whom he knew were gay not being able to express themselves
fully and a lack of visible black gay leadership. The silence and/or diminished expression of
those whom he knew were gay, their perceived inability to discuss their personal lives openly
communicated to him that if black gayness did exist in these professional leadership positions,
and that their gayness was silent. This calls back to Amideo’s (2020) point on black queerness
quietly living in marginal spaces. To Joshua, it may have been that it was possible that he could
be gay as an administrator as he indicated he would still try, but his hesitancy was connected to
what he said was a lack of representation. As he pointed out, his concern was that black gay
leadership had not been represented before, or perhaps enough, which highlights a conundrum of
sorts. Does black gayness exist in professional spaces, would he himself need to stay quiet about
it, or would he needed to be a pioneer here? The fact that Joshua reported that he feels that it is
“scary” illuminates unspoken beliefs and/or fears of potential consequences unknown. His words
mimicking what people might say about him “Oh [he and his] partner did this or whatever”
centers his concerns about others not accepting him and his authentic identity, as well as the
potential legitimacy of gay man in a public leadership position. To Joshua, it appeared that
stigma and beliefs of black gay men around him communicate to him that coming out publicly
was a choice that was inhibited if he wanted to further his career, and was not one that was easily
challenged, pointing again to Woodson and Pabon’s (2016) argument on legitimacy. The
possible representation of black queerness is rendered invisible and silenced because of its social
transgressions of not aligning with communal standards of masculinity (Woodson & Pabon,
2016). Beatty and Kirby (2006) argued as well, in the face of stigma, to avoid it, muting the
identity that is stigmatized is a prioritized defense mechanism against the damage the stigma may
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cause, and it is apparent that Joshua is operating as such. Similarly, Hill’s (2013) words come to
mind as well, that black gay men “are all too often situated in the ‘rock’ between choosing one
identity over the other, and the ‘hard’ place of declaring an implied allegiance and rejection of a
part of oneself.” In Joshua’s case, the implied impact to his career mobility forces him to mediate
his authentic expression, making him less able to fully embrace the gay side of him in his
professional context.
What is also invoked here is the conundrum of representation. To Joshua, the lack of
representation communicated to him that there was diminished viability in his choices to be out
publicly with the intention of being an administrator, while he could also be a source of that
representation should he so choose. This is largely an indictment of the amount of visible
diversity in leadership that Ferfolja and Hopkins (2013) argued existed in their work. In their
view increased diversity ushered in changes in classroom norms and boosted comfort for gay
teachers, which apparently is what Joshua suggested would help him to feel comfortable in his
desire to move upward. “Having to be that person” to break the barrier spoke to Joshua’s fear of
entering what to him is uncharted territory with underexplored implications, and ultimately
contributes to his lack of urgency to fully represent his identity publicly and keep his gayness
silent in certain contexts. Nine of the ten men connected with this particular challenge of
believing their gayness would impact their potential futures as educators. Given the frequency
with which this arose in the data, representation of positive gay blackness in the workplace
appears to be both a critical source and a positive feedback loop of a conundrum. Their words
suggest a need of representative force to make space thus creating agency for them to walk
authentically in their truths, while simultaneously being in a position to potentially do that for
others.
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Coming Out is Not Necessarily a Priority
An initial assumption made in my original conceptual framework stated that authentic
expression in the K-12 environment would be impacted by one’s personal choice of disclosure
and interactions with specific components of their professional environments, such as school
culture would influence their choice of disclosure there. It turned out to be much simpler than
that. As argued in my revised conceptual framework, coming out was not necessarily a priority.
It was apparent with intersectional details among all the stories of the men, that with respect to
coming out, they do not need to do it to be authentic. Each of the men, regardless of their
comfort with disclosing at work practiced some facet of radical honesty, that served the purpose
of passively expressing portions of their identity (DeJean, 2008). Placed in context with
Rasmussen’s argument, there was already a diminished sense of agency for them to come out
given their perceptions of the community’s response to gayness–with radical honesty
enabling/bridging authenticity, coming out was rendered moot. It is evident that radical honesty a
practice each of the men engaged in to subliminally reflect parts of both their salient identities
being black and gay instead of coming out, likely because it was easier (Rasmussen, 2004;
DeJean, 2008). Their stories revealed that rather than absorb the potential consequences that
might come with disclosing their sexuality, radical honesty was a vehicle of expression in ways
they felt necessary for both blackness and gayness. Radical honesty is a truth spoken in a silent
language recognized by those who need it and is a disruptive to a system that “fears the personal
and seeks safety in the technical, the distant, and the abstract” by freeing up energy once
consumed in hiding; in other words, it shines light into the borderlands (Palmer, 1998, p. 12).
DeJean (2008) highlighted in his work that those who engaged in radical honesty utilized
pictures, books, posters, etc. to reflect inclusiveness into their spaces as they believed in some
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way that it positively impacted the community around them if not just their classrooms. Further,
his findings reported radically honest teachers, channeled wisdom from memories and fears from
formative years and employed a “greater understanding of their individual identities and
beliefs…[to] provide a critical awareness and respect for the identities and values of others
(DeJean, 2008, p. 66). These men utilized symbolism with conscious and subconscious actions to
transmit of subliminal and symbolic meanings and representations of their identities as black gay
men. Eric, who is out to coworkers but not students, talked about how he used radical honesty to
signal his black gayness rather than doing so through coming out given his feelings about it. He
said,
I literally never gave it that much more thought beyond that, um, about what I would
actually do, how I would do it, if it came out. Like if it got discovered, would I own it?
Sure. At some point, my credibility is worth more than for me to, you know, play up a lie
that we know is clearly not true, you know? Um, but for me to willingly and openly one
day go, “Hi kids, I’m gay!’” Doesn’t make sense. So what I actually do instead…I started
putting up images. I have people that represent the LGBT spectrum, the people who
represent my blackness, my identity…all those different things. And I just let that kind of
speak for me. And if you read it okay, wonderful. If you read into it and figure out there’s
more there, great, but if not, great. It doesn’t make me any different. A better example
during black history month, this past month, um, I was overseeing this black history
month challenge. And so I would put out clues and different things that the kids would
have to guess and maybe even research. And then they give me their response and they
win a point. I had this huge display and I had so many different images of what blackness
looked like. I had RuPaul on the wall up there. I had Oprah and Diahann Carroll, uh,
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James Baldwin, Bayard Rustin, a whole bunch of different people that really people don’t
really consider a lot of the ways, especially RuPaul, are, um, really important. And so
those are my clues, but at the same time, I want people to kind of see that there is
diversity in [blackness].
Eric pointed to radical honesty as his way of signaling aspects of his identity, both black and gay,
without the need to come out. Radical honesty here is used to signal parts of Eric’s identity
which is consistent with DeJean’s findings that those who engaged in radical honesty in their
professional contexts did so in a manner that consistently revealed their own truths with inclusive
reflections of their own worlds (2008). In this snippet, Eric called into question the practicality of
coming out to his students, in fact, he said it “doesn’t make sense” to have a moment just to
come out; he prefers for symbols to speak for him instead. Coming out without coming out. “I
just let that kind of speak for me… if you read into it and figure out there’s more there, great….”
As argued above, radical honesty appeared to just be an easier avenue to authenticity, albeit
passive, express parts of himself that the barriers of coming out would normally render
concealed. Eric communicated “those are my clues,” as if to suggest coming out is desirable, but
the preference is for others to come to their own conclusion about his gayness, rather than
owning it in a singular declaratory moment. This is a point similar to one Rasmussen made, that
coming out is sometimes viewed as pedagogically unsound as it places one teacher to stand in for
an entire group of people representatively (2003). As he said, it “doesn’t make sense.” Further,
Eric’s statement “I want people to kind of see that there is diversity in [blackness]”
communicated intent to make space for gayness in definitions of blackness, pointing to another
of Rasmussen’s assertions that rather than coming out, there may be more effective ways of
unsettling heterosexuality to make room for diversity like through curriculum and “by refusing to
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behave as if queer sexuality were a secret requiring a declaration (2003, p. 158). Eric made this
possibility observable with his reticence with coming out and preference to carry on with
symbolism. This would suggest two possibilities. That Eric is making a conscious decision to not
declare gayness with specific intent like with Rasmussen’s assertion, or that Eric, and those who
align with his experience, would prefer not to confront the specter of coming out. Or similar to
another of Rasmussen’s point perhaps he is already out simply without declaring. Rasmussen
argued coming out could be expressed in multiple ways without using speech, through visual
expressions, curricular choices, and were even read by the students on their own, so he may have
even come out but on his own terms of opacity (2004). This also brought to mind Amideo’s
reference of Hemphill’s choices as that the border of visibility with respect to his black and queer
identities. Amideo argued that Hemphill claimed a “fundamental right to opacity…that is to say
the right now to be objectified, reduced and assimilated by the obsession for categorization that
form the basis of Western epistemology” (2020, p, 30. It is arguable that this may be similar for
Eric. In either case, with respect to stories of the men overall, seven spoke openly about
representing their identity with symbols like Eric.
In Charles’s case, radical honesty was an instructional tool. He spoke on how he
connected to this practice and revealed how he blended his connection to Atlanta’s ballroom
culture as a curricular choice to make positive impacts on his not just his LGBT students, but all
students to make inroads with inclusivity on his campus. He recalled,
I verbally project, um, blackness, but I think in my actions and in my, the way my room
is structured and the way I teach, I project, um, my, my gay identity more so it’s…while
you don’t see a lot of black or gay things on the walls, the way that my room is structured
is very much so, um, inclusive and you know, inclusivity for LGBT, inclusivity for
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different races and all of that. And I focus more on the LGBT a lot because the school I
work at has a lot of LGBT students and I want them to feel welcomed in at least one
space in the building. And so, um, for example, my science groups are, um, houses from
the ballroom community. Sometimes on Fridays or whenever we have a test coming up,
we have balls in my classroom. Oh, we go all out. And so they get to challenge other
houses for points. Um, they have to walk categories and so I might be like, alright, the
category is bacteria versus viruses today. Let’s talk about it. I need two people up from
the house. I need you to walk this, walk this category down, you know, like, and I even
give them the history. Cause I don’t want to just, you know, take somebody’s culture
cause I’m not part of the ballroom, but I don’t ever want to just take someone’s culture
and, and you know, monopolize it. And so I give them the full history of trans women in
the ballrooms thing, like LGBTQ folks in the ballroom, that’s my rubber boom. And so I
always make sure I give the history of it. And then the, for the whole semester they’re in
a house. And so they get to name their house after a scientist or House of Gessner or the
House of Darwin or House of Huxley or any of those things. And so, um, and even the
surprisingly, the straight black boys, presumably straight black boys, um, really love it.
The above showed Charles simultaneously bringing his identity into the classroom through his
use of radical honesty. Though he is not out to his students completely, he communicated that he
projected both his black and his gay identity through infusing his personal context with his
classroom, thus signaling his gayness without coming out, and connected it with need. And as he
said, he did so with purpose, with respect to his LGBT students, to make them feel “welcomed in
at least one space in the building,” implying his awareness that the LGBT community is not fully
embraced–shedding light on his own positionality as well. To make that impact, he pointed to his
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bridging of ballroom culture and education, which he observed was received enthusiastically by
his students, “even the, surprisingly, the straight boys.” When placed in context with coming out,
assuming a barrier to authentic expression, Charles puts into question if coming out is equivalent
to or commensurate with authenticity. DeJean wrote being “real and honest, and caring…and
someone who is able to move past fear to lower his or her protective barriers” was when a
teacher was authentic within the classroom (2008, p. 69). And in this example, Charles let his
identity inform his practice of instruction, both his blackness and his gayness as inspiration in
this space, when outside of it, he was quoted earlier as saying “I shut all that off.” He would wear
“anything that could remotely be tied to being gay,” yet here his protective barrier is lowered as
his black gayness is spotlighted without pronouncement of his sexuality, and without
consequence. The necessity of coming out is essentially eliminated in this circumstance, rather
than just being diminished as Rasmussen (2004) would argue. This microcosm of radical honesty
demonstrated in some part that the marginal benefit of coming out was attainable without
publicly owning gayness.
Ryan described himself as very comfortable with his sexuality among his coworkers and
reported making specific choices through radical honesty make space for others like him and
increase the comfort of those in his work environment to display their authentic identities. He
spoke on the importance of having a welcoming and supporting environment as he observed
more of his staff opening up about their sexuality since his actions. Ferfolja and Hopkins’s “the
more the merrier” argument comes to mind here as they argued the positive impact of increased
visibility of queerness in the workplace among colleagues, saying,
Being employed in a school that hired other sexually diverse teachers had the potential
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to create a more positive and supportive employment experience… Having colleagues
who identified as lesbian or gay and who were also ‘out’ at work was indicative of two
critical issues. First, it illustrated that the school’s micro-culture was one that enabled
lesbian and gay-identified teachers to be visible, even if only within the confines
of teacher spaces. Second, through this visibility, the diversity of sexual subjectivities
amongst teachers was normalised, re-inscribing the site as a space for such possibilities
(2013, p. 318).
Ryan communicated that he made it a professional practice of his to be a support for his LGBTQ
staff, all the while recognizing that the perception of his gayness impacted him as well; revealing
that he too made choices to diminish the impact his gayness has on his career, even as an
administrator. He recalled,
At work, I actually have a flag hanging in my office and all I’m saying, so when you
come into my office, so no one can never say that [I am not] into diversity. You know
what I’m saying? …By me, hanging in my flag in the office has allowed the other
individuals at work that have partners come out and have now been very comfortable.
And we have like just great conversations that’s about the lifestyle and like, maybe, Hey,
what’s your partner doing over the weekend versus than before I came to this school, it
was kind of like hush, hush…I’m very comfortable with myself. I don’t have an issue
with stating that. I will say [I am] selectively open, uh. I’d have to check out the scene
first. There are still some closed-minded people. So I’m an assistant principal now, so
I’m applying for a principal position. So I normally, before I go into like an interview, I
kind of like do research on the school district, or the people who’s going to interview me
and it kind of changed the way if I’m going to wear my ring, if I’m going to wear a
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certain color or a certain thing or just in like how I’m going to deliver a speech or
anything like that. So I kind of have some kind of like, selective with it.
Though Ryan makes the specific choice to display the LGBTQ flag in his office, signaling his
embrace of his at least allyship with the community if not his own membership, it is still
communicated to him that barriers exist for him in the professional world with embracing his
whole authentic identity in certain spaces. His perception of others being “closed-minded”, likely
a reflection of his experience in the outside world that is transported here, communicated to him
a need to police his own embracing of his sexuality when he’s vulnerable. He pointed to how he
needs to mute certain characteristics of himself to not be judged likely by stereotypes linked to
gayness. He brought up recognition in those things, before going into a job interview that
depending on what sense he got of those interviewing him, he would change “the way if I’m
going to wear my ring, if I’m going to wear a certain color or a certain thing or just in like how
I’m going to deliver a speech or anything like that.” This implies there is a specific set of choices
he is aware of that is disqualifying for his particular situation, as if a principal is not supposed to
wear X style or where Y color. Not just his style choices, but also his speech is perceived to be
scrutinized. Both of those harken back to those expectations of what a black masculine man is
supposed to look like, and in tandem, what a “leader” or administrator is to look like. Mostly not
feminine. Consistent with Brockenbrough’s (2012) point, the stigmatization of femininity in men
was rooted in masculine gender-roles expectations, which “value physical strength and
aggression and sexual prowess with women and hold particular expectations of dress, speech,
and behavior” (p. 735). It is arguable that it was communicated to Ryan, even though he
challenges this norm in his own space, that his authenticity would net rejection therein; he was
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aware of or at least perceived a gatekeeping status quo in that space, limiting his agency to
express authentically.
Coming out needs to be organic
It was evident through each of the stories of the men that coming out was something that
needed to happen organically if it was going to happen. In the preceding pages were several
examples of the men being reticent with disclosing their sexuality with none indicating any
particular desire to do so. When conditioning coming out was discussed, the most common
response was that they needed to believe it was safe for them to do so, which was not surprising.
The second most common response was that it needed to be for a purpose, with two reporting
they had exactly that when it happened for them. These two men who did come out to both
coworkers and students reported that they did so unexpectedly in response to a sense of urgency
in a teachable moment. At least one other individual indicated they would also come out if it
served a greater good or helped a student process coming out themselves. Jackson’s story best
represented this,
Ooh, it came down to a kid. So, I was closeted at school until there was…it came down to
initial visibility. Like I have a student who was very… he was battling depression and
suicide and… it was one of those. Like, he was my heart and I loved him and it came
down to… He was like, ‘well there’s no one here. You don’t even get me.’ And I’m like,
‘little girl, I get you more than you think’. Like, princess. You don’t know what’s up. So
let me tell you. And at that moment, it was one of those, I’m like, God gave me the words
to just make this work. This young man needed visibility. And he put them in that, put me
in his life, I think, for that moment of visibility. The anger when you are in a hyper
religious culture, which is the South, they called this the city of steeples. There’s like a
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steeple, literally on every street corner down here. The visibility saves lives. So as an
educator, I had to think, was the veneer of perfection worth the life of a kid? So it wasn’t
that I made this conscious choice of saying that today is going to be the day that I’m
going to wear purple. And we’re going to play "I’m Coming Out” and someone’s going
to bring me a damn cake. And like, we’re going to have like, you know, big dick Terry
walk around here with a party. No. It was more of a, in the moment one. I did not have
this growing up. I have the ability to give this to someone else. And then when that
happened, he was like, “What?” And I was like, girl, do you not realize there’s a reason
I’m not married? And he was like, Oh. And they started, it was like, I’m a ballet, dancing,
musical theater teacher. Like, not to be stereotypical, but. You have seen me try to play
basketball.
This snippet places Jackson’s reasoning for disclosing his sexuality to his student front and
center, “I had to think, was the veneer of perfection worth the life of a kid?” To make the
decision, Jackson pointed to the depth of the relationship with the student “he was my heart and I
loved him”, the potential of the student’s life being in danger due to his mental health
(depression and suicide), and isolation in a “hyper religious culture” alluding to anti-gay
attitudes. He recognized the student needed to be seen, “visibility” and made the decision to
disclose to the student to provide comfort. This highlighted a few different points. First, that this
reflects DeJean’s findings on radically honest teachers, that they channeled wisdom from
memories and fears from formative years and employed a “greater understanding of their
individual identities and beliefs.” Jackson cited not having someone like himself when he was in
the student’s position, and connected that to his judgement. Second, if the bar for coming out is
‘a kid might die,’ then that suggest the bar is quite high. Again, Jackson had to weigh his risk to
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his image/reputation or the student’s whole life and determine which one continued on. That
would imply the gravity behind the risk of outing, at least in Jackson’s case, is significant. That
would also suggest that without the depth of connection to the students, the choice may defer to
self-preservation. Lastly, Jackson made it clear coming out was not something he planned to do,
which also suggests that without this “moment”, coming out might not ever have happened. “So
it wasn’t that I made this conscious choice of saying that today is going to be the day that I’m
going to wear purple… It was more of a, in the moment one.” Jackson had to be in the right
moment at the right time to force him into a high-stakes decision about his disclosure.
Revised Conceptual Framework
I conducted interviews to gain access to the perceptions of the experiences and
interpretation of the circumstances therein that contributed to the constitution of a black gay
identity. I explored through questioning, their lived experiences, how they believed home life
and community fostered and/or influenced acceptance or rejection of their gayness by their
families, formative communities, and religious communities. I asked questions to reveal how
they believed their experiences as a Christian, and when applicable, practice of Christianity had
affected their perspective of themselves as a gay man, and how they believed it influenced their
sexual expression. I also asked questions to capture the perceptions of how their identity and
experiences as a black man shaped the world around them considering the implications of racism
and dominant cultural norms, and how they believed the expectations of them based on those
influences challenged their identity expressions. Additionally, I explored how they believed
being gay complicated expressions of what they perceive to be authentic blackness, and how
they believe being black and gay created unique circumstances others may not experience. I was
interested in the extent to which they feel they have developed a positive gay identity, and the
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degree to which they have personally experienced, witnessed, and/or internalized homophobia.
Most importantly, I sought learn what they believed to be were the critical formative components
from which their identity was projected, and how that put them in their own choice of outness in
their personal lives.
In my original conceptual framework, I argued these men engage in a cyclical navigation
of the disclosure of their sexuality in the classroom. The experiences that manifest their identity,
informed by their religious background and personal experiences with homosexuality, racism,
among other factors, interact with the culture of their school resulting in a choice to disclose their
sexuality in the classroom environment. Along with that, how open they decide to be is
represented on a continuum from closeted to out, and that they essentially come out twice–
privately and in their work environment. During the analysis process, two things became evident
revealing that my presupposition looked too narrowly at phenomenon and needed to expand to
represent findings that revealed a bigger picture. First, from a macro perspective, the stories of
the men were quite parallel. Their stories revealed lived experiences from early youth, through
their teenage and college years to their present lives, specific benchmark moments they all had in
common, suggesting a particular life path of sorts existed. All had an early gay discovery, had a
clear notion that their gayness was wrong and had to be hidden throughout their adolescence, had
a complex relationship with a church community, and all but one had conflict with gender role
expectations telling them how to be men. It became evident that there was a particular trajectory
that was common among these men that signaled specific features were at play in those
moments. For instance, how expectations of black masculinity were impressed upon them or
how their environment problematized gayness. It seemed to validate my original assertion that
their experiences from youth to present inform their choice of outness. Moreover, each of the
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men appeared to integrate gayness with their more salient identities aligning with Loiacano’s
framework on gay identity integration prior to entering their K-12 environment, suggesting that
comfort with their gayness was less of the issue. None of the men had personal qualms with
being seen as gay outside of their workspace suggesting successful positive integration of their
identities. However, being seen as gay inside of it was very different, highlighting vulnerabilities
among them that needed to be protected, turning to conflict with merging personal and
professional identities. Additionally, not a single one of the men expressed any urgency for
coming out. It was not anything they expressed looking forward to in the immediate future,
although there were discussions of it happening eventually and/or comments on the conditions
under which they would. The presence of that as a major theme raised a legitimate counterpoint
to my original framework–that coming out is essentially decentralized in these men’s experience.
It seemed to de-emphasize the metacognition on coming out as the primary focus here, and shift
toward the possibility my cyclical navigation argument actually being a smaller part of a larger
whole. There were pseudo-linearly progressive commonalities among the men that suggested
these black gay men walk a shared path with rich nuances beset by a legacy of expectations from
history that converge in the K-12 environment. With respect to merging a personal and
professional black gay identity, for some there is no desire, for others it is inevitably progressive,
for others its past tense. At any rate, I argued that for the men in the study and others with similar
with experiences and circumstances, a merging of their personal and professional may or may
not occur given perceptions of their K-12 environment along their individual journeys in their
professional lives. Figures 2.1 and 2.2 illustrate two pieces of a whole, as the latter extends from
the former. Figure 2.1 models a macro view that contextualizes and chronologizes the
possibilities captured in the outness continuum shown in Figure 2.2.
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Figure 2.1
Revised Conceptual Framework – Bow and Arrow Model
Ancestry
1. Early Life Tension
Upbringing with legacy
expectations of
masculinity telling them
who to be as black men
against the discovery of
gayness
String drawn and arrow aimed.
2. Momentum
Internal tension while
grappling with expectations,
self-discovery, and identity-
integration away from the
gaze of others
Pushing force applied as string to
return to normal shape.
3. Release
Development of authentic
identity occurring away from the
expectations of community,
along the way to unique
destination.
The arrow is shot.
4. Landing
Approaching professional
environment, tension with
expectations and history,
results in choice of
disclosure until reset.
Arrow aimed again.
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Figure 2.2
Original Conceptual Framework – Outness Continuum
Early life tension. Figure 2.1 characterizes this in the visual metaphor of an arrow being
shot by an archer. There is tension as the string of the bow is drawn with the arrow away from its
homeostatic position while the arrow is aimed. Symbolically, historical and cultured gender
expectations of masculinity from forebears, parents and community telling the men what kind of
man they were expected to be was at odds with the natural impulses the men experienced inside
at an early age. Who the men were supposed to be stood in conflict with who they were
inevitably becoming. In this early part of their lives, the men experienced various expectations
and pressures that socialized them toward their community’s standard of masculinity. Seen in
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Figure 2.2 and explained in Chapter 4, those expectations were informed by heteropatriarchal
expectations from a legacy of slavery and history as a black community and religion, interacted
with pressure to honor their ancestry. Moreover, they experienced pressures to meet expectations
from their religious, local, and cultural communities along with general homophobia. Grappling
with these expectations of masculinity contributed to their outlook on embracing homosexuality
internally, leading to an impermanent position on the outness continuum in Figure 2.1.
Momentum. In the second position in Figure 2.1, there is a pushing force in the diagram
of the bow and arrow drawn to its fullest extent. At this point, there is a combination of opposing
forces, that upon release will send the arrow forward. I argued that this period of their lives is
where the men grappled with social expectations and internal impulses pulling them toward a
gay identity. In the stories of the men, each of them had a period where they were privately
learning about their sexuality and recognizing changes within themselves as they learned more
about the possibilities of being a black gay man. From the inputs for Identity in Figure 2.1, visual
representation of black gay life in media in addition to examples in real life including role
models, mentors, extended family the experiences contributed to this period of self-discovery.
This theme of blooming the dark were shared occurrences that reportedly enabled the men to
learn about their sexuality, feel agency in expressing themselves, and experience the possibilities
of a confirmed black gay identity as they were removed from the anxieties and fears of others
discovering their sexuality. This had implications for their comfort with disclosing their sexuality
as they were likely engaging in the process of integrating their black and gay identities like in
Loiacano’s gay identity development and integration framework (1989). Loiacano characterized
this as “the process through which an individual progresses from an assumed state of
heterosexuality to an open, affirmed state of homosexuality” (1989, p. 21). The inputs described
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in the original conceptual framework, modeled in Figure 2.2 contribute to their outlook on
embracing homosexuality, again, leading to an impermanent placement on the outness
continuum.
Release. In the third position in Figure 2.1, the archer releases their hold on the string,
and the arrow is directionally shot. At this point, the arrow is on its own along its path. Shared in
the stories of the men were moments of realization and confirmation of self away from the gaze
of their family and community and their corresponding expectations. This happened as they
became adults, moved away to college, transitioning in their religious beliefs, in other words, it
happened when they were able to make decisions for themselves. For some, separating from their
family’s Christian communities and/or beliefs, learning about gayness in the privacy of their
bedrooms, meeting people who confirmed safety in their gayness allowed them to develop into
the men they wanted to be. Their unadulterated, authentic selves, unguarded in trusted spaces
emerged amid oppression, isolation, and distance from familial and/or community gaze including
that of religious communities. This authentic representation of themselves includes their
acceptance of gayness however negative or positive regardless of an expression of outness. As
arrows when they are shot as subjected to wind, drag, etc., potentially altering their course, these
men were also presented with a choice in various contexts to be open, and how open they would
be. Their stories revealed this was based on their perception of how others would perceive them
as gay men, how their present community would respond. Given that all participants identified as
out away from work, it supported the idea in my original framework that the men would make a
secondary choice of outness responsive to the K-12 environment. This essentially makes this
“second” choice of outness a function of a persistent rumination how much of themselves they
can reveal from context to context.
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Landing. In the fourth position in Figure 2.2, the arrow lands where it lands. It may not
be at its intended goal, it may have been blown off course, or it may be exactly where it needs to
be. What became apparent in the stories of the men was that of the choices that were made to
represent oneself authentically, it was not everyone’s desire to be out. Each of the men, in their
various positions on the outness continuum and in the various places they are with respect to
their sexuality being public, had different priorities in their professional worlds that made being
visible in their black gayness less important at times. The literature and the men in the study
demonstrated that while some men modify their outward identity expressions to meet identity
expectations in the K-12 environment, disclosing one’s sexual identity is not necessarily desired
as authenticity in the classroom can be achieved without disclosure, making the case for it not
being a goal for all to integrate a personal and professional gay identity. Rather than cyclical
considerations that land on a choice of outness on a continuum as argued in my original
framework, the merging of a personal and professional identity was best seen as a progressive
choice from “Not out at work” to “out to coworkers” and “out to coworkers and students,” since
it had less to do with their prior choice of outness, and more to do with their perception of how
safe they would be revealing their whole selves in their workplaces. Based on the literature and
the data from interviews, these men develop a professional persona that reflects their
interpretation of the perceptions and expectations of others receiving them as gay men. Given
their comfort, support among coworkers, relationships with students, and general need, these
men make a choice to obscure their sexuality or not depending on their individual contexts. As
demonstrated in several of the men, this is influenced by circumstance and changes over time, as
some of the men who became more comfortable with themselves and their surroundings changed
their views on being open. Figure 2.1 engages the idea that arrows can be aimed again, as they
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are reset back in the bow, and shot again. This is to represent how the men reconsider their
expressions and reactions to their environment over time, aligning with Figure 2.2’s cyclical
thought process.
Outness Continuum
I argued that one’s choice to come out was expressed on a spectrum of choices that were
continuously renegotiated based on the development one’s identity, and in the context of a
professional school environment, the interactions of identity and their school’s culture. The basis
of that argument was rooted in the idea of an outness continuum, which countered the notion of
coming out as a simple, perennial stamp marking the permanent decision of a dichotomy: in or
out (Jackson, 2006). The choice to come out was one that was constantly made and differed upon
a range of factors, from the people one was associating with, to the context one was positioned
in. Displays of outness might be tempered to prevent discussions or criticism or hostility in an
environment opposed to homosexuality (Bajali et al., 2012). Inversely, one’s outness might be
augmented by comfort with fears assuaged by being among peers, being in private with a lover,
or being in environments that tolerate, encourage, or celebrate being gay (Ferfolja & Hopkins,
2013; Jackson, 2006). This was even further complicated by one’s refusal to conform and modify
his behaviors given his surroundings or due to one’s personality, sense of confidence, etc.
(Jackson, 2006). In either case, a decision was made for one to be on some level of outness. The
range of choices were expressed in Figure 2.2, which is unchanged from the original conceptual
framework. Beginning at the far left of the spectrum, completely closeted was constituted by
having no one being informed of one’s sexuality, applicable to the given context. In this case, an
individual’s sexual identity could be a secret that was only known to him, or he could be out in
personal spaces, but in others like a workplace for example, his sexual identity was unknown.
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Moving forward on the spectrum lead to private. At this level, very few people might know of
one’s sexuality. This was most likely close friends or simply with those engaged in intimate or
romantic relationships. Selectively open suggested one was comfortable with people having
knowledge of their sexual identity and might even engage in displaying feelings or sharing
experiences of their same-sex relationships, but only with people or in situations of their
choosing, with criteria being subjective to the individual. On the verge referred to a frame of
mind that one was generally comfortable being seen as gay but had not yet made any formal
declarations of coming out. It must be said as well that, according to Rasmussen (2004) coming
out was not always a verbalization of the words “I’m gay” but also include actions, indications,
and expressions that were either implicitly and/or explicitly pronouncing a same-sex identity,
analogous to DeJean’s (2008) concept of radical honesty. Being on the verge indicated that one
was comfortable displaying their identity in various settings but had not confirmed in a manner
that was aligned with public acknowledgment, whereas being out does. Out meant that one had
in some manner confirmed and expressed willingly indicators of their sexual identity in the space
they occupied at present.
As Figure 2.2 suggests, I argued that placement on this spectrum was not fixed.
Approximate positioning on the spectrum was modified by changes in time. This argument was
consistent with the findings from Jackson’s (2006) study which suggested that as one ages,
changes in mindset in might occur, potentially altering one’s regard for factors upon which they
based his current level of outness. Additionally, over time the context upon which his decision
was made may change. This would further suggest that changes in one’s identity changed, so
would their perspective on their identity. This was critical, for as I argued above, a decision was
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first made in one’s personal life regarding their level of outness, and decisions to come out as
teachers would be predicated upon that foundational choice.
I further argued that for teachers, this consideration was a permanent cycle with every
school year resulting in an impermanent decision. As Ferfolja and Hopkins (2013) found in their
study, gay teachers’ decisions to come out changed as school administrators came and left.
Depending on their policies and support for sexual difference, agency of gay teachers was
influenced. Moreover, increased representation of sexual identity altered comfort levels as well
just by having more or fewer gay individuals in the environment, quite similar to one being
amongst others of the same sexual identity in other contexts and settings (Ferfolja & Hopkins,
2013). New groups of students and new co-workers also reignited the weighing the choice to
come out as the environment had now changed. As such, I expected that the men I studied would
reveal changes in their perspective over time or indicate future possibilities with their disclosure
based on changeable factors in their environments and their identities.
Identity
Any decision to come out of the closest is connected to one’s outlook on his gay identity
and how well it has been integrated into his self-concept. One would first have to experience the
steps listed in Cass’s (1979) model for gay identity integration:
(a) a general sense of feeling different; (b) an awareness of same-sex feelings; (c) a point
of crisis in which an individual realizes that his or her feelings can be labeled as
homosexual; and (d) an eventual acceptance and integration of one’s gay identity. (as
cited in Loiacano, 1989, p. 21)
Based on the literature, this process of integrating homosexuality into a black man’s identity is
more convoluted than what Cass presented, for it is wrought with a number of unique challenges
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compared to the experiences of white gay male Americans (Bajali et al., 2012; DeJean, 2008;
Hill, 2013; Loiacano, 1989; Woodson & Pabon, 2016). Consistent with the literature, these black
men had to resolve conflicts that exist between their religious beliefs, connections to their
culture, and their sexuality to integrate homosexuality into their identity. Much of what was
reported in the stories of the men was evidence of these conflicts centering around who they
were supposed to be as black men with respect the gender expectations given to them
specifically as black men. Both bell hooks (2004) and Clisby (2020) argued that black
masculinity is naturalized in history, its racial roots responsive to white supremacy, and black
aspirations of patriarchal masculinity are a vehicle to progress in a white, dominant power
structure amid a legacy of slavery and ensuing anti-black racist oppression. The implications
here and the words of the men suggest that a specific pressure exerted onto these black gay men
to understand a responsibility in their role as black men that being gay seemed to invalidate, they
are supposed to have wives and build families. The ancestors said so. One cannot be both an
arbiter of the heteropatriarchy and antithetical to it, establishing a core conflict within the
participants: honor the ancestors or honor themselves in defiance. For these men, gayness poses a
foundational conflict as embracing it challenges the standard order of things as it is perceived as
a subversion and abdication of the responsibility within the heteropatriarchy, threatening psychic
and social chaos (Amideo, 2020; hooks, 2004; Pascoe, 2005; Riggs, 2017).
Bajali et al. (2012) noted that gayness is frequently at odds with the black community,
which is firmly grounded in Christianity. The book of Leviticus verse 20:13 of the New
Testament says, “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of
them have committed a detestable act.” Verse 18:22 of the same book calls the same act an
abomination. Given these passages are interpreted to disavow homosexuality, integrating a black
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gay identity into one’s own understanding of the social practice of Christianity in a given
community presents a complex and personal set of decisions to come to terms with one’s
sexuality, being that gayness is incongruous to one’s religious community. As Bajali et al. (2012)
illustrated, many would prefer to belong to their respective communities than to embrace their
sexuality. They argued this tends to create a mindset that rejects gayness as part of one’s
expressed identity, or forces one to adopt behaviors like role-flexing, which masks one’s
homosexuality with recognition that one’s whole being is not accepted. It is as Hill (2013)
remarked, that black gay men “are all too often situated in the ‘rock’ between choosing one
identity over the other, and the ‘hard’ place of declaring an implied allegiance and rejection of a
part of oneself” (p. 210).
I further argued that, with pervasive homophobia in the black community, accepting
one’s gay identity will have also been complicated. As Woodson and Pabon (2016) wrote:
Successful expressions of Black masculinity are those that closely approximate
“dominant social norms,” including the “white normality-Black deviancy framework that
accompanies racism … the heterosexual-homosexual binary that supports heterosexism
… and a class system that grants propertied individuals more power and status than those
who lack it.” (McCready, 2009, as cited in Woodson & Pabon, p. 60)
This suggested that homosexuality and stereotypical hallmarks thereof, including femininity and
same-sex feelings and/or relationships, counter what constituted a normal or successful black
man. Richardson argued that effeminophobia, or the fear of effeminacy or gender transitivity,
recognizes behaviors that deviate from gender expectations or as innate or closeted
homosexuality through observance of stereotypes, and are often a conflation of homosexuality
and effeminacy (2009). Specific actions and characteristics are interpreted as telegraphing
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homosexuality. In a heteropatriarchal system, a black gay man would be rebuked, and develop as
Hill (2013) argued, internalized homophobia, forcing one to suppress feelings for the same-sex,
and struggle with one’s self-concept as one has become something he has been conditioned to
dislike. This is further perpetuated by gayness historically being seen as a white phenomenon
within the black community. Loiacano (1989) reported that gayness was irrelevant to the black
community’s interests, thus inhibiting the limited support it already received. This made gayness
an identity that is foreign to the community, something to be rejected and/or marginalized,
something that a black man simply could not be (Loiacano, 1989). With the addition of rampant
racism in the larger and predominantly white gay community, black gay men are frequently
estranged from a community that should be supportive of their identity (Hill, 2013). This dual
marginalization, further places homosexuality at odds with a possible black gay identity,
increasing the challenge of integrating it into one’s identity.
In the process of integrating black and gay identities, I further argued that many black
gay men will have suffered a lack of support, in the form of familial support and positive
representation. Many of the participants in Bajali et al.’s (2012) study reported either witnessing
or experiencing ostracization and physical removal from their familial household after the
exposure of a family member’s or their own sexuality. With this as a potential consequence, I
argue that this target population will have experienced the anxiety and fear that comes with the
cognizance of the importance of keeping one’s sexuality hidden, or repressed altogether, further
complicating their ability to integrate homosexuality into their identity. I initially expected that
many will not have had black gay role models or positive gay images to reinforce accepting their
gayness. Data from Loiacano (1989) revealed that a lack of role models gave participants a
perception that successful gayness (i.e., long-term relationships and free expression) was non-
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existent, making it apparent that being gay would be less that fruitful. That lack of representation
perpetuated the idea that to be gay was to be invisible and unloved, and avoiding that fate meant
walking the path of heterosexuality, further suppressing one’s gayness. Where role models and
strong representation of positive gayness existed, a turning point was reported in the stories of
these men, further suggested how critical seeing black gayness is to integrating it.
With the above statements, I argued that after the conditions presented in the literature for
black gay identity integration that one will emerge with a general decision of his level of outness.
If one is equipped with a positive gay identity akin to DeJean (2008), one could embrace the idea
of being out, both publicly and professionally. Given that a positive gay identity is something to
be achieved, its place in time is relative, meaning in combination with other factors, it could
become associated with one’s self-concept at some point in his life. Jackson (2006) reported a
number of the individuals studied typically came out as they aged, citing personal growth with
respect to being honest with themselves, a reduced need for external validation, and a
detachment to the judgement they garner from others. Jackson further stated personality is a
large determinant of action, dictating individual responses to their environment, and how they
may confront the notion of being out in the spaces they occupy. Age, personal growth, and
personality are factors in what Jackson described as a necessary level of comfort for grappling
with not only acceptance of one’s gay identity, but also the willingness to defend it when
necessary (2006). This suggested a variable response in the timing of coming out as one ages and
develops over time, making his place on the outness continuum fluid. The findings from the
study revealed that these factors are less impactful than originally thought. Each of the men were
out in their personal lives regardless of their age, but instead pointed to their perception of their
K-12 environment like Jackson argued (2006).
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School Culture
In regard to school culture affecting agency to come out, I was interested in learning what
gay black male teachers pointed to in their environment that delayed/delays or
prevented/prevents them from coming out. I asked in interviews what they believed made their
existence in a school environment unique considering their racial, gender, and sexual identifies.
Understanding that race and gender are visible identities and are the first in what others notice
upon meeting them, I asked what they believed and/or experienced regarding expectations and
stereotypes placed on them as black men in a heteropatriarchal environment, and how, if at all,
racism has affected their existence in the greater school environment–and by extension their
comfort in displaying other aspects of their identity. I asked to what extent do they believe their
administrators prioritize diversity at their school and how it affected not just their agency but
also their teaching. This was to understand the degree to which they were enabled in their
practice of radical honesty.
When transported to the K-12 environment, the authentic version of themselves,
including but not limited to their gayness, is guarded as authenticity was demonstrated to be
managed according to their perception of the environment and how authentic they want to be
there. I argued that conditions in school culture influence the level of outness one may believe he
is enabled to display in the school environment.
14
Several works have pointed to the nature of
one’s school being a catalyst for teacher agency in his/her behaviors, such as the flexibility in
curricular choices, collaboration among teachers, and the practice of radical honesty. DeJean
14
I am specifically focusing on school culture as a singular determinant of outness. While it is acknowledged that
other factors may affect outness that are externally related to school, such as a general community, it is also
expected that one may have already determined a level of outness regardless of the school culture. As the literature
noted, school culture has mutable effects in this regard, therefore it is the feature being more conducive to answering
the research question.
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(2008) detailed radical honesty as a practice where teachers are able to display a level
authenticity according to their own truths, including enacting curricular choices that challenges a
system that “fears the personal and seeks safety in the technical, the distant, and the abstract
(2008, p. 37). Regardless of comfort with disclosing sexuality, radical honesty was a
multifaceted tool that channeled authenticity particularly when it was anticipated that community
response to gayness would negatively impact their career progression. Agency to perform in this
manner is predicated upon a number of catalytic factors. First is geographical location. DeJean
(2008) argued that a school’s regional location dictated the nature of the school’s social
environment. As such, a school with a lack of diversity may not prioritize issues that stem from a
lack thereof. In the case of a gay teacher, the school’s embracing of the open practice of one’s
sexuality may not be realistic as it has been suggested in the literature that diversity is foreign,
displays of difference are peculiar and frequently challenged (DeJean, 2008). From this I argued
that a school located in a geographical area where homosexuality is commonplace, more comfort
will be engendered for black gay teachers to disclose their identity. The men in the study, being
located in both liberal and conservative area, suggest instead geographical location may be less
of a determinant. I asserted, however, that this is largely predicated on the degree to which
racism is experienced in the school environment. For black teachers, gay or not, racism is always
a factor in efforts to authentically display one’s identity and participate in radical honesty, and
not meeting one’s expectation of their perception of what a black person is supposed to be has
been shown to cause conflict in the school environment (Hill, 2013; Woodson & Pabon, 2016). It
is evident that there is a constant pressure to fit oneself into the heteropatriarchal norm of what a
good black person is supposed to be and that incongruence resulted in a rejection of the identity
that was on display for sake of what it was supposed to be in the beholder’s view (Woodson &
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Pabon, 2016). Even amongst black students, black teachers were still met with this expectation
embody the stereotypical and area-typical markers of what a black man is expected to be
(Woodson & Pabon, 2016). I argued that being black and gay in this situation makes this
marginalization two-fold in a predominantly white environment. The play of racism and sexual
identity in a homosexual-averse area create hostile spaces, forcing one to either choose to fit the
expected mold, create a persona that matches it, or simply move on to a new school. (Woodson
& Pabon, 2016). I argue that this creates a unique experience of marginalization for black gay
teachers as their whole identity can be at odds with what their environment sees.
I additionally argued that one’s classroom context contributes in some ways to one’s
comfort in disclosing their sexuality. As evinced by Jackson (2006), classroom subject and grade
level affect one’s choices to come out. Subjects the engaged in discussions of human
circumstances, like in Social Studies, increased the likelihood of disclosure (Jackson, 2006).
Moreover, depending on the grade level and age of the students, instances of one’s sexuality
varied, with disclosure being more common with older students (Jackson, 2006). With these
factors, I expected a variance in the experiences of the men I studied, and for them to provide
additional insights for the decisions that were involved in choosing their level of disclosure
unique to their classroom contexts.
Chief among my argument for school culture dictating one’s disclosure of sexual identity
and the extent to which the previously described variables are present in a school environment
was largely dependent upon a school’s leadership. A school’s administration has been shown to
create spaces for diversity in their school, attributing that development to their own policy
implementations and leadership (Ferfolja & Hopkins, 2013; Mayo, 2009). Depending on how
much they prioritize diversity in their school and cultivate it within the confines of their purview
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(e.g., school policies, hiring choices, etc.), a commensurate amount of agency is fostered in their
school’s culture, strongly affecting one’s participation in radical honesty (DeJean, 2008). While
administrators’ hiring practices are predicated upon the pool of applicants, their choices of hiring
gay teachers and people of various ethnic backgrounds have strong implications for the value of
diversity in a school (Ferfolja & Hopkins, 2013; Jackson, 2006). Increased diversity ushered in
changes in classroom norms and boosted comfort for gay teachers, enabling their agency in
radical honesty, which in turn is enabling of movement along the axis of the outness continuum
(Ferfolja & Hopkins, 2013).
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Chapter Five: Discussion, Implications & Recommendations
This dissertation examined the lived experiences of black gay male educators to
understand the how they made sense of their ability to bring their authentic identities into the K-
12 environment. A qualitative study was conducted to address the following research questions:
How do black gay male educators construct their identities in their K-12 contexts, and
how do they express themselves authentically in their respective workplaces?
To answer these questions, I used purposeful sampling to locate 10 individual black gay male
educators who worked in a public, K-12 school setting across personal and professional
networks. Given the small number of black male teachers–“less than 2% of the U.S. public labor
force”–and the presumably smaller number of those who are gay and are comfortable enough to
discuss their experiences, network and snowball sampling were best (Woodson & Pabon, 2016,
p. 58). Snowball sampling personal and professional networks, specifically the Facebook
networking group “Black Male Educators,” was instrumental in finding candidates for this study
in the public school system. To capture more typical experiences of black men connected
through the African diaspora, these men needed to identity as black, gay, male, and Christian,
and work as a teacher or administrator to participate in the study. Other considerations taken to
achieve as close to maximum variation as possible within the sample included seeking a range of
ages, years of teaching experience, geographic locations, and different levels of outness. As the
goal was to explore the identities of black gay men, their lived experiences, and their perceptions
as it pertained to the disclosure of their sexuality and expressing authenticity in their K-12
workplaces, I conducted individual interviews with each of them for data collection. These
interviews spanned 1 to 2 hours each via telephone and video conferencing on Zoom given their
residence about the country. Because I included myself in the sample as a black gay educator,
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Dr. Artineh Samkian volunteered to conduct my interview using the same interview protocol
used with the other participants. Interview data was interrogated using analytic memos and tools
as described in Corbin & Strauss, with a priori codes and aggregate themes developing from the
analysis process. Findings were generated after single-case and cross-case analysis was
conducted of aggregate themes.
Summary of Findings
Black masculinity, as told through the stories of the men, was a unifying topic that these
black gay men grappled with from their lives as children, leading into their professional world.
These men, in their lived experiences, confronted the legacy of expectations of black masculinity
to define who they were in and out of the professional world, in contrast with how the world writ
large saw them. A host of expectations thrust upon them – history as black people in America,
cultural and religious expectations of sameness, to the continuity of heteropatriarchal family
systems – told them what kind of men they should be, despite the men they became. They were
told to be “men,” strong, leaders, protectors, fathers, etc., by their families, religious
communities, local communities, and were expected to produce the qualities thereof as they were
supposed to portray what others anticipated of them as black men. Communal standards of
masculinity communicated to them that the men they were developing into as gay men was
unacceptable for a multitude of reasons, everything from it being a sin in a religious context, an
abdication of gender-role specific responsibility of being masculine, amid a host of messaging
from family, peers, community, and entertainment media confirming that. For these black gay
men, in their time of development, being gay meant being silent, invisible, and anxious and
fearful of exposure of the secret they maintained until they were able to walk confidently as they
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accepted and integrated gayness into their identity, often by separating from sources that
perpetuated their oppression.
Despite the expectations of embodying archetypical characteristics of a black male
identity relative to their cultural and religious environments that problematized effeminacy and
homosexuality among black men, the men interviewed in this study exhibited bifurcated identity
expressions to diminish the impact knowledge of their gayness may have in a given context, but
particularly so in their professional spaces. The unadulterated versions of who they were in their
personal spaces, became moderated in their workplace. Each of the men reported suppressing
and/or hiding their gayness as part of their authentic identity in their unique K-12 contexts in
ways they did not outside of their professional environments. This occurred regardless of
whether the men were not out at work, out to coworkers only, or out to both coworkers and
students. Their lived experiences with beliefs and systems that problematized gayness leading up
to their present professional context conditioned them to expect similar anti-gay beliefs and
systems in their work environments as they are reflections of the larger worlds in which they are
situated. In other words, their history informed their present perceptions that their gayness must
be negotiable as a matter of job security and career progression, irrespective of policy or
geographic location. Reportedly, among them were fears and expectations of discrimination,
retaliation, diminished reputation and credibility upon recognition of identity expressions and/or
characteristics that were stereotypical identifiers of gayness in men, like femininity and other
failures of black masculine competence as defined by their respective communities. As such,
their choices of outness in their K-12 contexts reflected not just a choice of whether to be out,
but also the result of their grappling with complex navigations of growing up with a host of
expectations and pressures that forged their perspective on who they were and what they allowed
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people to see of themselves. Moreover, their choices to disclose their identities challenge
coming-out narratives that characterize coming out as a benchmark of gaydom (Rasmussen,
2004). Among them, coming out as means of being authentic was not a priority, if a goal at all,
as authenticity was able to be achieved through radical honesty, and alignment with their black
identity was more important than representing gayness, regardless of their comfort with being
gay.
Implications and Recommendations
A particular challenge I had at the outset of my data analysis was deciding on where to
start with the sheer number of details that contained the fruits of years of personal reflection and
growth through loss, anxiety, isolation, wonder and the pain of love. The lived experiences of
these black men shed an immense light on what it is like being a queer, black boy with obvious
femininity in opposition to the expectations of their religious parents, or the boy who could be
really good at football if only he were tougher and started hanging around boys who called him a
fag more. It shed more light on the young black boy up at the wee hours of the morning at
Youtube University taking courses only offered when everyone was asleep, and on the boys who
gold medal in Linguistic Gymnastics and Conversation Dodgeball as they flexed and code-
switched to talk about girls or sex or sports with enough competence to avoid shame. There was
a range and a depth among the stories of these men, very intersectional yet nuanced, revealing
avenues that extended beyond the scope of my research question and the purpose of this
dissertation. For example, the impact intervention had in their lives during their periods of
discovery. When a person, or figure came into their lives who communicated reality in their
hopes, had conversations that stuck with them, taught them something about the parts of them
they believed were forbidden, created a safe space for them to see things differently, it suggested
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paradigm shift. These were included in the moments they reported changing the way they saw
themselves. While my question was not about the specific details of their coming of age, it was
relevant to understanding how they made sense of embracing gayness on their own and
understanding what informed their responses. They identified moments where sexuality was
made accessible, engaging, instructive for life.
In the following sections, I will discuss the implications and recommendations for
educator practice, education policy, and future research that emerged from these findings.
Practice
In their workplaces, these men, and I would dare to say others of marginalized identities,
need institutional change agents from dominant groups and cultures (heterosexual allies,
administrators, colleagues, community members, etc.) who act on their behalf in their micro-
cultures to create brave spaces in their environments to facilitate paradigm shifts in favor of
advocacy for otherness for the adults in the school system. Some of the men expressed desires
and ambitions to see change in their work environment that made them and their students feel
safe being themselves without consequence or ridicule. They used radical honesty to normalize
varied expressions of black masculinity that would foster such change that would first benefit
their students. However, it begs the question, who in their stead is making change with them as
the beneficiaries? The men who engaged in radical honesty with the hope of expanding what
black men looked like made the active choice to do so and did not make any reference to others
who advocated on their behalf or on behalf of others with marginalized identities. These men
took it upon themselves to save themselves if they were to be saved at all. It is easy to think of
the students when thinking about the impact the education system has, but the education system
has an impact on the adults as well. It is easy to think about the social environment the students
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endure, the social environment the adults endure must also be considered as they also mold and
shape it. In chapter four I highlighted a moment of Ryan’s, where he discussed the impact of
specific choices he made to openly ally with his queer employees. He made relationships with
them, he got to know them, he leaned in as part of his practice and observed the change in his
employees’ level of comfort to discuss their personal lives. He signaled a safe space with his
rainbow flag, and he signaled a need for a brave space. Arao and Clemens (2013) wrote that
brave spaces expand beyond a safe space and challenge the way one may think about a
controversial topics like race to “better understand–as rise to–the challenges of genuine dialog on
diversity and social justice issues (p. 136). It is a brave space because it moves beyond simply
being comfortable enough to have the conversation, but to learn and unlearn. Said of brave
spaces, bravery is needed because “learning necessarily involves not merely risk, but the pain of
giving up a former condition in favour of a new way of seeing things” (Arao & Clemens, 2013,
p. 141). In practice, through the likes of brave spaces, making space for diversity, in pursuit of
the anti-oppressive education that Kumashiro argued for, can be effectuated through school
leadership from the top down. Ryan is an example of this. However, Ryan is only one person and
would be limited to those he had access to. From a position of practice, a system-wide culture of
understanding and prioritizing, not just tolerating, difference but teaching about differences in
brave spaces could move the needle. For instance, what would it look like to implement brave
space discussions among the faculty during meetings rather than standard professional
development and email-worthy notices? What would it look like if staff, as a learning
community, were given the opportunity to have facilitated dialog to engender a cultural practice
of anti-oppressive education for faculty? What impact would it have on morale and quality of
teaching? Kumashiro (2000) argued that not all forms of oppression are known, and school
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cultures perpetuate oppression through a lack of consideration of the perspectives of those
marginalized and lack of a commitment to the actions that foster deeper understandings of those
othered. That from Kumashiro’s perspective would lead to paradigm shifts and brave space-
making could help facilitate that. Educators should consider providing and creating spaces that
deliberately engage in controversial topics among the school’s faculty to bolster and unlearn
potentially harmful ideologies in addition to transforming conscious and unconscious biases.
Professional development activities geared toward intellectual discussions on topics of gender,
sexual expression, identity, and other topics that tend to be professionally taboo to help the staff
overall be better equipped to make their school environment more inclusive as a matter of
practice and culture. Further, with support for this coming from administration, teachers could be
better supported in engaging in brave spaces in their classroom, where students would benefit
from the discussions, as well as benefit from the outcome of changed perspectives of their peers.
This recommendation exists in the ideal realm, however. Such a recommendation does not come
with naivete, as there are likely legal barriers, risks, and concerns that may impede such
engagement given the disparity of attitudes of sexuality being discussed in a K-12 environment.
Effective implementation would require the support from powers that extend beyond the local
school environment, altogether signaling a paradigm shift in governance of the K-12 system is
also required to empower this practice in the face of opposition. At any rate, utilizing brave space
engagement is a steppingstone to a larger movement to deconstruct cognitive barriers to the
learning and embracing of those who are othered by gender and sexual identity expectations.
One of the recurring concerns that the men brought up with respect to expressing their
authentic identities and coming out were the consequences they might endure because of the
reactions of those in the community like parents might have negative responses to their being
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gay. This was brought up in the context of the men being accused of inappropriate relationships,
improperly influencing the children through indoctrination, and other instances of homophobia.
Those ideas were stifling to those who might otherwise be more comfortable bring their
authentic selves to the workplace. In the stories, the individuals who were able to be more
authentic were aware of legal protections and had a general understanding that those protections
would be enforced and/or they would be protected by those in leadership. A recommendation
here would be to make the support and protection of teachers of the queer spectrum an
instrumental part of school culture. This is not only to demonstrate to those with marginalized
identities allyship within the K-12 environment, but to also push out to the community it is
situated in and challenge the way they perceive marginalized peoples. Ferfolja and Hopkins
(2013) and Woodson and Pabon (2016) highlight how schools are micro-cultures reflective of
their larger environments. If the school environment is reproducing structures that oppress those
who are gay, likely then is the environment is similar. School cultures and actions that enable the
learning and representation of marginalized people, and actively resist discourse that seek to
suppress diverse expression are a way to achieving anti-oppressive education (Kumashiro, 2000).
In the service of creating more black gay visibility that stands to normalize borderlanded
black masculinity, as a matter of practice, it is incumbent upon black gay educators to literally be
visible. While this potentially stands in contention with many of the points made in this
dissertation that reflected the perceived dangers and threats associated with coming out, it bears
consideration. I am asking black gay educators to consider the alternative to the catastrophizing
ruminations that manifest in such a precarious position given the significance their presence may
have for black gay boy and girls as a model of possibility. What if we are radical in our visibility
and it all works out fine? What if unique differences in our black masculinity makes it easier for
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a student or a colleague to perform their own? I am asking black gay educators who are
ambivalent here to not only grapple with the risks potential harm, but also the benefits and
impacts and potential good that may come with being visible, and what it might mean for the
vulnerable among us. The men in this study, regardless of their views on coming out, spoke of a
number of possibilities. Take Brandon’s view on the impact of more visible black gay role
models in the classroom for example,
Oh, Lord, it would be a wonderful world! Oh, it would be great. It would be great. Cause
then it would be…then we would realize that that, um, that sexuality is not a monolith.
And that everybody is not going to be the same and you can have male, a black male gay
gym teacher, as much as you can have a black gay male chorus teacher and, you know,
they may be different and just to glean from them who they are and what they are willing
to share…but you can see that there is a difference in the world…When it comes to
gender expression in the classroom…sexuality expression within the classroom. Um, I
feel like there’s just this understanding that we, we know what a black male gay teacher
would look like. And I feel like if there was more of us in the classroom, um, that were
open about who we could be, um, then young black men and young black girls will be
able to see that it’s not all as bad as people might be making it look to be.
In Brandon’s view, said visibility would foster a normalization difference among expectations of
black masculinity in teachers. Deconstructing sexuality as a “monolith” is the feature in
Brandon’s view, that has the potential to change perspectives to embrace diverse sexual identities
in black men that supersede stereotypes. From his perspective, doing so would change the
perception of “what a black male gay teacher would look like” and make it more acceptable for
others to embrace the difference here. Charles echoed similar ideas to those of Brandon, making
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a more stringent case for why black gay educators should consider how important and impactful
black gay visibility in the classroom is despite the personal risk. Charles explained,
I think if students were able to see more black gay men in classrooms, I think that they
would be able to challenge their own, their own beliefs…I think that it can help them
intellectually. I think that we honestly would see better achievement and see higher
interest in the classroom if we have more black gay men in the classroom. And I say that
because yes, there are some, there are quite a few of us who teach and do all the things,
but I don’t think it’s enough to make it so [mainstream], and so well known that this
exists that this, this, this paradigm exists of what a black gay man means in society. So
when they see it, they mainly either hear it from people who don’t agree with it. Um, like
their family members of our church people or whatever, or they just see, see it as distant,
like on TV or, you know, in Atlanta they might see it at the mall or whatever, but that's
distance to them. That’s not connected because they don’t know these people. [But] if it’s
connected, if they see it every day and they’re able to experience what a black gay man,
um, the intellect of a black gay man, as well as the, the compassion that we tend to show
in classrooms, then I feel like one, they will be more interested in coming to the
classroom. Um, cause I can even say that with myself, like I have students and tell me,
“you’re the only reason I actually showed up to school today, cause I wanted to come to
your class. Like I hate all my other teachers, but you make it fun.” “You’re inclusive.”
“You get to talk to us”… I love to just sit and kiki
15
sometimes. And I also think it will
boost their own intellect because they’re seeing something that’s different from them.
15
“Kiki” is a colloquial term originating among the black queer community, used both as a verb and a noun. It
generally means to gather and/or a gathering to converse among friends, casually sharing stories, gossiping, and
laughing together, as described by Mother Dorian Corey in the film Paris is Burning (Livingston et al., 1992).
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Um, if they’re, if they’re straight, let’s say they’re seeing something different from them.
And they’re having to process that they’re having to see it daily and debunk the myths,
the myths that they had debunked, the ideas that they were taught, the ideologies that they
grew up with. And when they start to do that and they’re starting to process in their own
mind, they’re literally building high-level learning. Um, because they’re able to analyze
something and take what they analyze, break it down and rebuild it back up to whatever
this new idea is. And that’s literally what we’re teaching in classrooms. I don’t just teach
science.
To Charles, the visibility is more than just breaking down barriers and gender expectations. It
extends to the learning in the classroom. In his view, “it could help [students] intellectually” as
they would be able to engage in deconstructing preconceived ideas of black gay men that have
been taught to them from others. Moreover, Charles argued that being in a learning environment
with black gay male teachers helps to bridge the distance between themselves and black gay
men, disrupting what makes them the “other,” in his view forcing them to build new perceptions
based on experience rather than hearsay. Most salient among this excerpt Charles observed is the
immediate impact of such exposure. Charles related how his being open positively impacted his
students, making an inclusive environment that his students want to be a part of. He noted his
student saying, “you’re the only reason I actually showed up to school today,” demonstrating the
strength the relationships he was able to build because of his positionality. It gave a student a
reason, motivation to persist by having someone they could relate to.
Jackson’s perspective zoomed in on the practical day-today-day implications of such
radicalism. In a similar question on the effects of more visible black gay men as educators,
Jackson responded at length,
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Effects? A lot less suicide. A lot less homelessness. A lot less, uh [promiscuity]. A lot
more self-respect. Um, what I have seen over the decade that I've been out now being a
visual, I get to be the dad that their dads cannot be. Like, I am. They actually call me dad
in the hallway. The more visible that I have become, white gay, Hispanic gay, queer,
questioning, whatever… [I talk to] kids that I'm like, okay, “now I know what you're
going through right now.” Like, “you’re going to be fine”, like, “don't do this. You're
going to regret it later.” And I have seen promiscuousness go down, because where that
promiscuousness comes from uselessness comes from…Yes, some of it is “we’re men”
and we’re biologically like “go out there and get it.” But it also comes from a lack of self-
worth and a lack of visual possibilities and fear. Like where does the, in South Georgia,
where does this little gay boy go when you have a cough, cough, cough, cough, cough,
and the AIDS medical person tells you, “You’re gay…Are you sexually active? When
was the last time you've had an HIV test?” That happened in December. And you gotta be
there to deal with that breakdown because, I've had that breakdown. I was able to look at
him and go, “I know exactly what you're going through. Here are the steps.” And we take
it section by section by section, moment by moment. But things that most straight boys
get to have conversations with their dads about, like every dad has given their son the
birds and the bees talks where they can talk about girls or they can talk about such and
such, because that is the normal way. The inability to talk about that leads to depression.
It leads to self-doubt. It leads to hate, self-hate. It leads to heightened promiscuousness. It
leads to a hole because you’re just going to try everything. Guilty.
Jackson’s point of view here speaks to an unfulfilled need for queer youth, particularly queer
youth of color, to have models and mentors that understand the challenges they experience
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without someone to talk to about them. This is obviously not dissimilar from the stories shared in
this dissertation. In Jackson’s view, there is the potential to “be the dad that their dads cannot
be.” While this may not be in everyone’s scope of responsibilities as a teacher, there is great
potential in serving queer kids of color who are figuring out their lives in secret.
The research done here made it clear that black gay men weigh the risks of disclosing
their sexuality in their K-12 environments, causing some not to while others explore authenticity
in other ways. Coming out and being visible is controversial and potentially dangerous, and the
stories of the men support that this danger persists across geopolitical boundaries. The ideologies
that silence black gayness are pervasive. However, the literature and the interviews make a
distinct argument with respect to black gay visibility. At some point it must show itself, even in
the face of criticism or danger if change is to be made. Like one of the tenets of radical honesty
said: Stand firm in commitment to the practice of it to garner lasting change (DeJean, 2008).
Beatty and Kirby’s (2006) hidden identities study showed that concealing stigmatized identities
avoided harm in response to the stigma. With respect to self-preservation, that makes sense. But
on a larger scale in this concept, if there is change happening, the stigmatized are forced to
change, and not the stigma or the beliefs that enable it. In the spirit of James Baldwin, “Not
everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced” (1962). The
two men in this study who were out to both coworkers and students, Charles and Jackson,
demonstrated this best. In both scenarios, their identities were brought forth from the borderlands
in a moment where they confronted their previous beliefs on staying silenced in their expression.
But once they took the leap out from that shadow realm, they witnessed the impact of it. It saved
lives like Jackson did. It changed perspectives like Charles did. I also recognize that in writing
this dissertation that I too step from the shadow realm in renewed faith in the possibility of
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similar impact. To that, I pose the question what does one personally gain by being radically
honest? From my own experience, which also parallels that of Charles and Jackson as I join their
ranks, the answer is freedom. I let go of the weight I carried having to always parse my words,
filter my clothing choices, avoiding conversations. No longer was I Sisyphus, forever charged by
Zeus with pushing the boulder uphill. I gained a stronger sense of self and a boost to my own
confidence as I entered the classroom with that burden in my past. I was better for it and my
connection to my school environment improved as I realized no one cared, at least not enough to
cause me any trouble thus far for simply being me. It is not my intent to disregard anyone’s
feelings and/or beliefs about their own circumstances that inhibit them in this endeavor, but to
encourage a movement in which we stand as beneficiaries. If the nuances of black masculinity
are to be normalized, the narratives and concepts that surround it must expand, and showing
ourselves would help make that possible. Although I argued above that black gay men are often
tasked with saving themselves, and I do believe that to be true, I also believe it is equally true
that in passivity and silence rather than conscious unsettling of heteronormativity, we too choose
the side of our oppressors. Again, all that is changed in avoiding the stigma is the stigmatized
and not the stigma itself or the beliefs that enable it. It is not my intent to diminish the value of
the concerns that gay black educators in seemingly precarious positions with respect to
disclosing their sexuality or to valorize coming out in any way. My intent is, nonetheless, to
engage the merits of courageous authenticity despite the threat of retaliation. Examples were
shown in this study where authenticity–if not a subliminal outing–through radical honesty
disempowered the proclamation of coming out. However, those acts were still radical in
challenging or negating expectations of gender or sexuality. At a minimum, they were “acts.” In
the goal of systemic and cultural praxis advocating, embracing, and actualizing discourses that
224
empower diversity in gender expression, black gay educators should not need to save themselves
alone, certainly, but more of us must join the fight if it is to happen.
Policy
Sexuality being taboo is something that needs to be addressed through policy. Several the
men discussed the inappropriate nature of discussing homosexuality or sexuality in general with
children highlighted an interesting conundrum with respect to changing the status quo on gender
expression. For example, again going to Ryan, he denied discussion of his gayness with students
because of his opinion on talking to them about his being gay and their knowledge of sexual
experiences related to it – explaining that sex between men exists. He felt it was inappropriate in
relation to their age, they were too young, which reflects how he was similarly told the same
thing after his mother caught him in a sexual act when he was young. By this logic, he
understood sex was not something children should be privy to, as communicated to him from his
mother, an adult. And this was not just sex, but to be clear, sexual acts between the same gender,
as reflected in the examples. If nothing else, it communicated the idea that talking to children
about sex is wrong, but especially not gay sex. I think the premise of that ignores the reality that
heteronormative structures are solidly embedded in multiple facets of children’s lives,
effortlessly and inevitably so. From the standard two-parent family structure to everyday
examples, heterosexual sex is a fluent visual absorbed in normal, that children understand more
than just gender roles, but the mysteries of sex and its rules for straightness by observing,
listening, living. As Coleman and Charles argued, sexuality is much bigger than intercourse and
genital pleasure; it is a spectrum of behaviors, attitudes, and values (2001). They argue that
sexuality is a broad spectrum to describe human development, manifestations of physiological,
225
social, biological, and cultural factors that frame self-perception and social roles (Coleman &
Charles, 2001). The authors were candid in saying,
Religious upbringing, peer behaviour, ethnicity, gender, and so on influence how teens
express themselves sexually and they are as males and females. The fact of the matter is
young people do not wake up on their thirteenth birthday, somehow transformed into a
sexual being overnight. Even young children are capable of sexual behaviour and that the
early years of a child’s life are spent exploring his or her sexuality. For example, by about
the age about three or four, children become aware that they are male or female and what
their gender means in terms of dress, relationships, and behaviour. Young children may
also have had some experience with masturbation and even same-sex or opposite sex (p.
18).
Men from this group said of themselves that from an early age, they understood not just that sex
was a thing, but that they knew two boys together was a bad thing or something the adults
around them would not want despite their innate impulses telling them otherwise. It was
communicated to them both directly and indirectly, as they said, from family, community,
culture, and religion, what sexuality was and that it was supposed to be one way and not another.
Young children do understand and process sex and sexuality, and in underestimating that, the
opportunity to redirect oppressive, hegemonic heteronormative structures is lost as
heterosexuality is allowed to be perpetuated as the default each time sexual differences are
allowed to stay invisible. It begs the question, how can space be made for accepting sexual
differences if discourses that include it are disallowed? If the dominant discourses and attitudes
and belief systems in K-12 education continue to revolve around the propagation of what is
deemed normal, thus heteronormative, how can space be made for differences in identity in such
226
a way that is meaningful and lasting? The stories of the men in this study imply that by shying
away from introducing children the reality that more than heterosexuality exists, not only is the
hegemony of heterosexuality upheld as it goes unchecked, but so is the oppression of those with
sexual and identity differences. When this was observable in the interviews, the concern was
either that the children were too young, or there were concerns of what parents would think,
perhaps their discussing their gayness would indoctrinate the child somehow, or there was a
concern about ethics of breaching conduct. Each of these appeal to some established consensus
that reinforces the notion that excluding sexuality and identity from children protects them.
These stories captured in the data serve as evidence to the contrary. The inability to feel safe, the
uncertainty of self, the isolation, the inner conflict, the guilt, the pain, the wonder, all the
emotions these former gay children shared suggest that maybe it is time to have those
conversations. A paradigm shift through policy and practice that enables and accultures brave
spaces to promote not just toleration of sexual and identity differences, but the integration of it.
Policy would see liberal arts learning include contemporary discourses on identity and sexuality
in a way that affirms differences, rather than avoid it to be safe from controversy. Further, policy
would need to ensure the protection of engagement of the topic as it is integrated in curriculum
ethically.
Research
Future research should examine the ways in which this population participates in
perpetuating and reproducing the same the beliefs and conditions the pressured the silenced of
their sexual identity through their attitudes and actions both by pressure and by will. There were
many ways the men exhibited the same beliefs and behaviors that told them being gay or being
feminine was wrong, like Fred who actively distanced himself from being associated with
227
feminine men, demonstrating his own effeminophobia and homophobia. There were several
examples like this, where the men themselves did not want to be associated with the stereotypes
held of gay men, which is not surprising, not wanting to be seen as feminine or flamboyant,
wearing rainbow flags and attending pride festivals, and having a certain recognizable twang in
their vernacular. Quoting Fred, who discussed this at length, “So, you know, I just don’t flaunt it.
I don’t, um, carry on with “girl, you know [emphasis added] …,” I’m a professional and I want to
be, as I said, treated as a professional.” Ryan paralleled this saying, “I tell people, so I don’t walk
down the street, waving a flag or doing cartwheels to wearing the halter tops or whatever
people’s perception of what gay black men do.” Both examples invoke emasculating caricatures
of black gay men associated with stereotypes of not being traditional men as expected. However,
if the discourse here surrounds changing the way gay black men are perceived, not wanting to be
seen in that way is arguably counterproductive. Radical honesty, however impactful it might
have been, was seen in this dissertation to signal gayness without coming out, but ultimately
further the notion that for gayness to exist with blackness, it had to be secondary, silent, and/or
invisible. It brings into focus how the perceived self-preservation held in radical honesty or role-
flexing and code switching potentially is both a double-edged sword of sorts. One hand, there is
protection in the emulating heteronormativity, however, the dominant narrative of gender
expectations of black gay men goes unchallenged. DeJean (2008) was clear in his argument that
radical honesty required a commitment in the face of controversy and criticism to produce the
change that was ultimately desired. For the image of black men to be diversified, the differences
within need to be seen, otherwise, the invisibility of it remains. However, there are conditions
that extend beyond the scope of this dissertation with respect to black male identity,
expectations, heteropatriarchal expectations, internalized homophobia, and reproductions of what
228
is deemed normal that they this populations interact with that allow reinforces the oppression
thrust upon them. It reduces their agency to be black and gay in spaces that are not obviously
safe for them. Understanding these conditions and acts of reproduction would provide a greater
depth of insight on the features of their lived experiences that inhibit diverse representations of
black masculinity.
Further research should also investigate how perceptions of gayness being a white
phenomenon further propagates an inhibitor to the integration of blackness and gayness. DeJean
(2008) discussed this in his work, that there is a history of the black community viewing gayness
this way. Though it was excluded from my findings for scope, this was a concept that a few men
discussed in their own assessments of the black community’s attitudes on gayness that seemed to
be present a large cultural issue that rejects gayness in the community outside of religion; that it
is somehow foreign to us or excludes us. In other words, it’s a belief that black people are not
queer and if they are, they are aligning with whiteness, as if aligning with a force that is a
function of the oppression of the black community–like working with white supremacy rather
than fighting against it. Consider this moment in the interview with Tim,
Eric (00:54:25): Some have said that being black complicates coming out, particularly in
a school setting, you’ve already kind of mentioned it a bit, but I want to just kind of go
back to that. What are your thoughts on that specifically?
Tim: I absolutely agree because, um, I think if it’s also easier to digest white gay folks is
because they have been made the image of the LGBT community for so long. So, so
when it’s somebody’s black, it kind of complicates the narrative that whatever the person
may already have in their head, because even when a lot of black people come out today,
um, the automatic accusation is that we are somehow aligning ourselves with whiteness
229
by simply acknowledging who we are attracted to interests. Like whiteness is such the
faith of being a queer person that in order for a black person to be openly queer, they
have to automatically be aligning themselves with whiteness. I’m saying that is the
perception and that, that, that, that identity that even if you live on ninth ward in New
Orleans, never been off your block, um, that, but you being gay, acknowledging the fact
that you are a male who likes males, that that is somehow trying to be white.
Eric: Hmm. Almost as if being gay is a white phenomenon.
Tim: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that’s why, you know, in the quote unquote
hood that it’s more acceptable for a white teacher to be openly gay because it’s almost
expected. Whereas, whereas if you are a black man who is gay, you are looked at as in
many ways, in many ways letting the community down because you’re supposed to be
the strong black man who’s leading a family who has a wife who, um, and, and, and even
in, even for people who don’t believe in that per se, they still feel like you should be out,
um, doing something, doing something that is indicative of the kind of masculinity that
they view as peak masculinity. That can be either being a husband and father, or it can be,
um, running your own trap house, whatever it is that that particular person values.
Tim’s words call back to the earlier discussions of the implications of race on coming out when
it comes to black men. Within it is a betrayal of sorts, that being gay is seen as an abdication of
duty to the patriarchy, a poor representation of black masculinity, a renunciation of blackness. In
other words, that its white people stuff. “Le blanc, en francais,” quoting Jackson from above.
The intersection of race and sexuality here contextualizes the strain captured in Rasmussen’s
(2004) argument on those in disempowered communities often have to choose between their
cultural identity and their sexual identity for sake of cultural membership. At least three of the
230
men invoked this idea either referentially or directly as above, and it raised the potential that this
is a larger idea in the conflict with black expectations of identity that have less to do with gender
and/or religion. It illuminated a particular idea that, for blackness to succeed, it cannot be seen as
weak. It has to not only persist through oppression, but also excel to defeat white supremacy.
Hearing “having to be twice as good to get half as far,” needing to be perfect, and better than,
was incredibly common in the context and succeeding in like through barriers erected by racism
with white supremacy at the heart of it. In juxtaposition, that makes the stereotypes of gay men,
femininity, etc., all things that black men do not have the luxury of being. As bell hook (2004)
said, black men rarely in history have ever had the chance to define for themselves what black
masculinity was, at Tim’s words along with the others, support the veracity of that idea. That
gayness is viewed as emasculating, it stands counter to the expectations of black masculinity, and
suggesting again, that black men being gay is potentially viewed as counterproductive to black
progress (hooks, 2004; Woodson & Pabon, 2016). To better understand how black gay educators
can be further supported in actualizing their whole identity in their work environments,
understanding this layer of argument coming out is important. Those same men who invoked the
idea of gayness being a white phenomenon also thought it was more important for themselves to
be seen as black rather than gay, and that it was important for their students to see them as a
positive example of black man, yet in that example, gayness is excluded from it. Looking further
into this phenomenon I believe will help deepen the understanding of the barriers of coming out
for black men.
231
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Appendix A: Interview Protocol
"First, I’d like to thank you for consenting to participate in this interview. As a reminder,
this study is focusing on the lived experiences of black gay male teachers and how those
experiences inform their choices to disclose their sexuality in the classroom environment.
The interview will approximately last one hour. Given your consent, I would like to record
my own written notes and record our conversation for later review and analysis. At any
moment, you may prompt me to stop recording for any reason should you feel the need to
do so.”
“I would like to begin our conversation by asking you questions that focus on your identity.
I am going to start with questions that focus on your early years.”
1. Tell me about the environment you grew up in.
a. For example, how would you describe your home life as a child?
b. Describe an experience you had during your youth that you think represents the
role your family played in your life growing up.
c. Can you describe how, if at all, you feel "family" has contributed to your image of
yourself? In other words, how do you feel family has shaped the person you’ve
become?
2. What kinds of expectations did your parents have of you? For example, how, if at all, did
your parents communicate to you what they expected of you as a boy?
a. Describe an experience that you had with your parents that you think represents
the way they communicated their beliefs about what it meant to be a boy.
b. Describe an experience that you had with your parents that you think represents
the way they communicated their beliefs about what it meant to be a black man.
3. What role, if any, did religion play in your family? For example, did you go to church?
Did you go to religious school?
a. Describe an experience that you had that you believe demonstrates the role
religion played in your family’s life when you were growing up.
4. What role, if any, did religion play in your life? For example, did you have the same
beliefs as your parents? Or, did your relationship to your religion (your belief in G-d,
your connection to your church) change at any point in your growing up? Tell me about
that.
“Now I would like to shift gears a bit to your discovery of your sexuality.”
5. Tell me about discovering you were attracted to boys or men. If you can, describe what
you remember about that recognition.
6. After recognizing that attraction, what do you recall you were feeling after that?
7. Who, if anyone, were you able to speak to about your sexuality?
a. Tell me about one of those experiences.
8. Can you recall a time when you felt anxiety about family discovering your sexuality?
Describe that for me.
9. What kinds of images or expressions of gayness where around you growing up?
a. How did those images shape your perception of gayness?
237
10. Family is a relatively flexible term. We tend to think about nuclear relationships (Mom,
dad, siblings, etc.), but often there are extended and/or adopted family that contribute to
our upbringing. What other family has helped you develop your identity?
a. How did they help shape your perception of gayness?
“Now I am going to shift to your current life as a gay man.”
11. How would you describe your comfort with disclosing your sexuality?
12.
a. What is your disclosure status?
*If participant is out*
i. When did you decide to come out?
ii. What led you to that decision?
*If participant is not out*
b. What do you think prevents you from coming out?
i. Some have said that one’s own feelings about their gayness correlates to
the social acceptability of being gay. Thinking about your own non-
disclosure, how do you feel about that statement?
13. How would you describe your religious identity? For example, are you a practicing
Christian, culturally Christian, etc?
14. In what ways, if any, do your religious beliefs guide your day-to-day decisions?
15. How, if at all, do your religious beliefs tell you about homosexuality?
16. How do/did you come to terms with your sexuality in light of those beliefs?
17. In what ways are you active in your religious community? How would you describe your
religious community’s views on homosexuality?
18. Some would say that homophobia in the black community comes from the church. How
would you respond to that?
19. How would you describe your experience with the gay community at large?
20. What kinds of support have you received from the gay community?
21. How strongly do you feel your gayness is a part of your whole identity?
“Now I would like to shift gears and talk with you about the culture of your school.”
1. Where do you currently teach? Subject? Grade level?
2. How much consideration, if any, have you put toward coming out at work?
a. Tell me about that. Think about a conversation you have had with yourself or
someone else about coming out at work. Describe it to me.
3. How would you describe the level of support you receive from your administrator to
display parts of your identity in the classroom?
4. Think about a recent interaction you have had with one or more of your coworkers that
you believe represents the quality of your relationships. Tell me about that experience.
a. How are those relationships, in your opinion, helpful or hurtful when it comes to
being yourself in the school environment?
5. What measures, if any, do you take to hide your sexuality from your colleagues and
students? Think about a recent time when you worked to hide your sexuality. Tell me
about that. What happened?
238
6. Tell me about a time when you felt pressured to put on a persona to avoid your sexuality
being called into question? What happened?
7. What kinds of protections, if any, are in place at your school for LGBT teachers?
a. How safe from retaliation, of any kind, do you feel you are with respect to coming
out at work?
8. How well do you feel your school prioritizes diversity and learning about differences in
people and culture?
9. What is your opinion on the idea of teachers being role models for their students?
10. To what degree do you think it is a teacher’s responsibility to be a role model?
11. What effects do you think are possible if there were more black gay teachers as role
model?
12. What kinds of experiences, if any, have you had with racism in your position as a
teacher?
13. Some have said that being black complicates coming out, particularly in a school setting.
What are your thoughts on that?
a. What experiences have you had with that particular feeling?
14. With respect to your whole identity, being black and gay, which of the two is more
important for you to project in the classroom, and why?
a. In what ways do you project your identity in the classroom?
15. What specific set of circumstances would need to be present in order for you to feel
comfortable coming out in the classroom?
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Sanders, Eric Bernard Timothy
(author)
Core Title
Executive realness: examining the identity construction of black gay male educators and its influence on authentic identity expression in the K-12 workplace
School
Rossier School of Education
Degree
Doctor of Education
Degree Program
Education (Leadership)
Degree Conferral Date
2022-05
Publication Date
02/03/2022
Defense Date
11/10/2021
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
African-American,authentic,authentic identity,ballroom,Black,black gay male,black teachers,Christian,coming out,Discrimination,Education,Educators,Gay,heteronormativity,heteropatriarchal,History,Homosexuality,identity,identity expression,K12,K-12,LGBT,Male,marginalization,masculinity,OAI-PMH Harvest,Oppression,outness,paris is burning,pose,professional,Queer,Race,Racism,radical honesty,Religion,representation,sexuality,Workplace
Format
application/pdf
(imt)
Language
English
Contributor
Electronically uploaded by the author
(provenance)
Advisor
Slayton, Julie M. (
committee chair
), Green, Alan G. (
committee member
), Harper, Shaun (
committee member
)
Creator Email
ebsander@usc.edu,ericbsand@gmail.com
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC110618977
Unique identifier
UC110618977
Legacy Identifier
etd-SandersEri-10375
Document Type
Dissertation
Format
application/pdf (imt)
Rights
Sanders, Eric Bernard Timothy
Type
texts
Source
20220207-usctheses-batch-911
(batch),
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Access Conditions
The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given.
Repository Name
University of Southern California Digital Library
Repository Location
USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA
Repository Email
cisadmin@lib.usc.edu
Tags
African-American
authentic
authentic identity
ballroom
black gay male
black teachers
coming out
heteronormativity
heteropatriarchal
identity expression
K12
K-12
LGBT
marginalization
masculinity
outness
paris is burning
pose
radical honesty
representation
sexuality